


Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow

by AndThatWasEnough



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baby Jack Kline, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Cute Jack Kline, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Post-Season/Series Finale, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Speculation, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22518337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndThatWasEnough/pseuds/AndThatWasEnough
Summary: So what happens next?They don't know.(That's actually not as bad a thing as it sounds.)
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	1. [Tomorrow] is Our Permanent Address

**Author's Note:**

> So once upon a time (roughly November of last year) I had what can only be described as a prophetic dream about what the end of Supernatural would look like, and you know what I thought?
> 
> "I have to write this down. Like - as a piece of writing."
> 
> So that's what I've done here. It was a crystal-clear vision of what the end looks like, but the problem is that I simply have no idea how it is our beloved characters got there. I just know that this is where they're going to end up, because obviously, I am a Prophet. An Oracle. A Seer of All Things Very Important. And I simply had to share it with you all, because what would be the fun in keeping something like this to myself? 
> 
> (I guess in my heart of hearts, all I want is for these characters to end up happy. So I will give to you in spades what the show will likely not give to us...at least not quite.)
> 
> Happy reading :)

_Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave  
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness  
per every madge and mabel dick and dave  
–tomorrow is our permanent address_

_and there they’ll scarcely find us(if they do,  
we’ll move away still further:into now_

_~_ “all ignorance toboggans into know” _,_ e.e. cummings

They all knew how this story began.

Now, they all knew how it wasn’t going to end.

xXx

To be honest, it’s not like this was the worst hunt they had ever been on, or the worst monster they had ever had to deal with. One of the uglier ones, though, all squat and hairy, with just about the longest arms you would ever see, and long, stringy, red hair. The boggart had lured them out into the marshes, and Sam and Dean were wading knee-high in the muck. According to the elderly man who lived in the house on the property, his granddaughter – just about the only kin he had left these days – had been complaining of clammy hands reaching up from under her bed and tugging her ears and caressing her, which was just plain perverted if nothing else. Boggarts were easy enough to kill, shot to the heart or the head – they were humanoid, after all. The tricky part was finding them, especially once they had escaped to their natural habitat of the marshland; then you had to be really careful because there were plenty of accounts of boggarts burrowing down so you couldn’t see them, and by the time they had you ‘round the ankles it was too late – you were supper.

“Some weather we’ve been havin’ huh?” Dean called over the wind, which seemed to have picked up in just the past few minutes. They’d had near-record rainfall, and Sam sure hoped that meant that they would at least get some snow this winter – make the constant damp worth the trouble. Seemed every day for the past several weeks had been overcast and threatening a downpour. This hunt would have been infinitely easier if the ground beneath them was just a _bit_ more solid.

“No kidding!” Sam yelled back, shaking his head in near-amusement. Near-amusement because some days, it was like…of _course_ they were hunting a marsh monster under a full sky threatening rain any second now. Of course. Of _course_ there was mud and silt sticking to their jeans and seeping into their boots, getting their socks wet. This had been their whole lives. It was almost a comfort, really, that at least this part was predictable. Sam and Dean Winchester were better than weathermen – pretty much whenever the hunt was about to hit its climax, the weather would suck. Pure predictable poetry.

“Watch for holes,” Dean warned, and Sam fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“I know,” he said, shaking his head at his brother. Forty-one and his worry wart tendencies were just getting worse and worse the older he got. But Sam did glance down, making sure there wasn’t any movement right under his feet, that the ground wasn’t falling out from under him, that –

_“Son of a bitch!”_

Figures that Dean, who was more worried about Sam than himself (per usual), was the one who bit it as the gorgon’s long, spindly arms reached up from the sodden earth and grabbed his ankles, knocking Dean to the ground and using him as leverage to pull the rest of his body out of the ground and grab Dean by his hair (Sam would be sure to use that against him later if he ever knew, so Dean decided to keep that part to himself), and trying to suffocate the hunter in the mud, before he would drag his body back underground.

Sam had other plans.

Shouting his brother’s name, Sam sprinted across the marsh as best he could to get to him, trying to move fast enough so as to skim the surface and not sink down into it. The gorgon heard Sam coming and startled to alertness. As Dean struggled to release himself from the gorgon’s grip, the thing let out a scream and scrambled up his body, Dean nearly gagging as he felt the creature’s long nails scratching against his skin through his clothes.

“Sam!” He yelled. “Hurry – augh!”

The gorgon’s weight pressed Dean’s chest down into something sharp underneath the surface of the earth as he leapt off his back and at Sam, but Sam wasn’t so easy to take down. So while Sam struggled, Dean unglued himself out of the muck (he was now covered head to toe, back to front in mud, up his nose and in his mouth, but goddammit, it was just another day at the office), pulled his gun from his waistband, aimed, and delivered the shot to the gorgon’s back, and it immediately seized up and fell from Sam’s body to the ground. 

Sam stared at his brother, mouth gaping, a bit stunned. “You were sure of the shot, right?”

Dean shrugged. “…pretty sure. Let’s go home, huh?”

xXx

Dean pulled the Impala into the bunker’s garage, and he realized it was only then that he felt himself relax. He would never get over the adrenaline of not just having his own life threatened, but Sam’s. He never would. Sam was obviously fine – a bit dirty, but completely, one-hundred-percent fine – but Dean couldn’t help but let his mind wander to what _could_ have been, to play a game of _what-if_. He’d probably never stop, either, no matter how much their circumstances changed. It was hardwired into him to worry. 

“You okay?” Sam asked, a little smirk on his face, sympathetic and kind and _Sam_.

“Yeah,” Dean nodded, then he took a deep breath. “How ‘bout you?”

“’Tis but a flesh wound,” Sam deadpanned, and Dean snorted. The snort made Sam laugh. “But what about everything else?” He went on. “You doin’ okay with that?”

Dean drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and looked out the windshield. You couldn’t tell from here, but the bunker had slowly filled up over the past few days until it was absolutely crawling with activity. Dean liked people, he really did, and their friends were their family, but he _had_ been feeling a bit claustrophobic for about the last day or so. Hit pretty suddenly. That’s why they’d taken the boggart case. He wouldn’t have minded just being out in the garage for a while, just him and the cars, breathing in their exhausts and the smell of ancient oil-stained pipes and car wax. There would be time for full details another day, though – there were things they needed to get done first. Well, actually, the green Thunderbird would be getting some special attention from him soon, but the others would have to wait. 

“Yeah, I’m good, man,” Dean said softly, smiling and gently cuffing his brother on the shoulder. Sam ducked his head shyly.

“Alright, alright. I’ll quit asking, then. C’mon, let’s see about getting cleaned up and if we can help Jody with anything.”

They most certainly _could_ have helped Jody out, but she took one look at the Winchester brothers – hell, she _smelled_ them before she could see them – and started vigorously shaking her head. “Oh, no, no, no.” She waved a hand in their general direction. “Whatever the hell it is you’re covered in, it’s gonna have to all come off before I even _consider_ letting you anywhere near what we’re doing. Capiche?”

“Yeah, we capiche,” Sam said tiredly, giving in easily. He could admit to himself that he had done enough to help lately that he could excuse himself for a couple hours, get cleaned up, recuperate. Dean was probably feeling about the same. “If you need us, I’m sure you can figure where to find us.”

“Uh, you bet, buddy boy,” Jody sarcastically chuckled. “You get on that any time now.”

Dean snagged a few beers from the fridge before following Sam, who had already grabbed the better-stocked first aid kit they kept here at home, back to the shower room. Sam went in one stall, Dean in another, the two of them side-by-side as they shot the shit and Dean drank two beers and Sam had half of his. It took Dean three washes of his hair and Sam four to get all the gunk out, and they watched mud and silt and little bits of dead leaves and twigs swirl down the drain. Dean was able to belt out a few bars of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” before Sam told him to shut the fuck up and save it for another day. Dean told him he was a spoilsport, and stayed under the spray a few minutes longer than Sam, letting the water knead at his poor, aging back. By the time he was finally done, feeling a little looser and lightheaded in that nice way that a hot shower made you feel, Sam was sitting on the toilet lid, towels wound around his waist and head, first aid kit opened up on the sink ledge as he sorted through it for antiseptic and bandages. Nothing needed stitches, thankfully, but a few butterfly bandages never hurt anybody, and neither of them needed an infection right now.

“I already got the one on my leg, so could you just” – he gestured to the backside of his shoulder, and Dean grabbed the cloth and the antiseptic and cleaned it out, getting what the shower couldn’t, and slapped a bandage on it, maybe slapping a little harder than necessary, but Sam’s yelp was worth it.

“My turn,” Dean sighed happily, and Sam methodically cleaned and taped up the spot over Dean’s heart where the boggart’s nails had just started to sink in. He told Dean to clean up his bloodied ear himself – he wasn’t getting anywhere near his days-old wax.

As Dean gingerly wiped away the dried blood from his ear, he looked at Sam through the mirror as he finished towel-drying his hair. “Think Jack’s gone to bed yet?”

“Mm,” Sam hummed, shrugging. “Maybe. Bedtime’s been pretty lax, especially with Cas gone the past couple days. I think it’s kinda been forgone with all the excitement. Night before we left I found him passed out in a pile of laundry.”

Dean allowed himself a small smile. Had to admit, that was pretty cute. “Well, haven’t seen him yet, so maybe Jody finally wrangled him to bed.”

“Or Claire,” Sam suggested amiably. “He listens to her pretty well, too.”

Claire had quickly become Jack’s favorite babysitter, his sort-of sister. She treated him gentler than anyone else in her life, and it was one of the only times you could describe the girl being sweet when she was interacting with Jack. Dean finished cleaning himself up and then put all the supplies away, snapping the kit shut. He briefly considered shaving before deciding to forego it – he’d done enough for tonight. The shave would come later. “Well, I’m gonna get dressed and check on ‘im.”

“’Kay.”

They went their separate ways, Dean taking his time on his way back to his room. He passed a frazzled-looking Alex, who shot him a distracted smile and a _welcome back_ before rushing off, back to work on whatever duty had been delegated to her. “Hey,” he called after her, and she stopped suddenly in her tracks, looking a little irritated at having been held up. “You seen Jack?”

“Uh, not for a while, no,” she sighed. “He probably went to bed. You should, too.”

Alex gave him a kinder smile, and a cocked eyebrow that suggested she thought she was in charge. Dean waved her off. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Night, Alex. And, uh – thanks.”

“No problem!” She called over her shoulder, and then scurried off.

Dean loved the feeling after a hunt, one where you weren’t quite so irreparably damaged and you’d saved the day and kept anyone else from being hurt, and then you got home and you took a shower and got into your pajamas. The cuts stung a bit still, but not so bad that they were really bothering him, and the damp chill that had settled deep into his bones out on the marsh had been chased away by the warm water and booze. Now all that was left was to check on Jack and hopefully get something to eat, then crawl into bed himself. He had a big day ahead of him – had to finish up that Thunderbird, which he was already up against the wire on.

Just as he was getting his socks on and shoving his feet into his slippers like the old man he was, he could hear Sam’s bare feet (how in the hell could he stand that with these cold concrete floors?) stop in his doorway. He was dressed for bed and looking anxious. Dean raised an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

Sam hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “I stopped by Jack’s room. He’s not there. Have you seen him yet?”

Dean slowly shook his head. “No,” he drawled. He studied Sam’s face and started to feel the same anxiety settling in his own stomach. _Awesome_. “What’re you thinkin’, Sammy?”

Sam ran a hand through his hair as he kept one hand on his waist and stared down the hallway. “This place is huge,” he said, shaking his head. “And everyone’s been so busy and in-and-out, and without Cas around the past couple days, maybe he wandered off. Who knows, he could be anywhere by now…”

That was one of Sam’s greatest fears these days, that Jack would just wander off into the bunker to parts unknown of this great eldritch beast, and they wouldn’t be able to find him. That he would find something that could hurt him, or trigger some sort of PTSD. The possibility made his heart race, though he tried to keep his breathing even and stay calm. He had heard over the years that parenting was basically being worried twenty-four-seven, which was already awful in theory, but it was so much worse in practice. It would be just their luck, to have something rotten happen to them right now, of all times….

Dean sighed and pushed himself off his bed. “Alright, man, c’mon. Let’s go look for ‘im – he couldn’t’ve wandered far, and I’m sure somebody’s seen him. C’mon.”

For once they didn’t split up, instead asking everyone they came across in the halls if they had seen Jack. Most of them had also assumed that he had been sent to bed much earlier, and walked away with slightly confused faces when they heard he wasn’t in his room. Jody had been too preoccupied to keep up with the kid, so she’d assigned Claire to his case, but Claire had to go out about an hour ago to pick up a few supplies, so she had passed off the baton to Patience, who had last seen Jack in the library, but she had gotten sidetracked when Bess Fitzgerald had asked her to come help her and Garth with something down at the shooting range. Patience clearly felt pretty guilty about letting Jack out of her sight, and Sam and Dean had to spend about ten minutes reassuring her that it wasn’t her fault. 

“Fuck,” Sam whispered harshly, once again running his hands harshly through his hair. Dean rubbed at his chin, thinking.

“We could ask Ernesto,” he said suddenly, and Sam dropped his arms and stared at his brother like he was crazy.

“Who the fuck is Ernesto?” Sam spat out. 

“One of my little discoveries,” Dean said with a bright smile. “He’s kinda like Jambi from _Pee-Wee’s Playhouse_.”

Sam narrowed his eyes a bit, the comparison processing in his mind. “He…he grants wishes?” He asked, still confused. Were they supposed to wish to know Jack’s location? Dean shook his head.

“No, no, I mean…well, he’s kind of just this head in a box like Jambi is, but maybe he’s more like a magic mirror…anyways, he seems to kinda know the goings-on of this place, so it couldn’t hurt to ask. Right?”

Sam stared at his brother for another beat before nodding tiredly and following Dean back into the bowels of the bunker. How was it that his brother was always stumbling upon this weird shit? He had Sam walking for what felt like forever, following a map in his brain, taking odd twists and turns that had Sam convinced they themselves were lost until Dean suddenly stopped in front of a door labelled 42Z. Because of course. Was it _Z_ because they were near the end? Or was it just because?

Room 42Z was little more than a supply closet, but it was a closet full of weird shit, so pretty par for the course. Dean beelined straight for what looked like an old wooden chest laid on its side so that the top was facing out and towards them. He knocked a couple times and opened it up, and sure enough, there was a floating head in there, but he was purple, not green like Jambi, but Sam had to admit there was a bit of a resemblance. Not as much makeup, but Ernesto was also wearing a turban.

“Ernesto, hey,” Dean greeted. “We need your help.”

Ernesto the floating head grinned. He was wearing gold lipstick. Sam couldn’t stop staring. “And with what might you need help with?”

The whole thing was so casual. Dean was just talking to a floating purple head with gold lipstick, and Sam was just dumbly standing off to the side. It was like this happened every day. For a minute there, he forgot his kid was missing. All he could think about was that they’d had a floating purple head in a suitcase all this time, and Dean was friends with him (it?). 

“We can’t find Jack,” Dean admitted sheepishly, and Ernesto hissed, clucking his tongue. “I know, I know. Would you happen to know where he is? Nobody else seems to, and you know how that kid can be, always getting himself into trouble.”

“I know, I know,” Ernesto shook his head, the only part of him he _could_ shake. Sam continued to stare. “Well, I can tell you he hasn’t been by here or anywhere nearby, but that’s about all I can tell you. Best guess is he’s back near the front because I haven’t heard anything. Trust me, I’d know if he’d been in here. Whenever I catch glimpses of the kid, he can’t stop yakking to save his life.”

Dean laughed good-naturedly. “Don’t we know it. Oh, hey, Ernesto – you know my brother Sam, right?”

Ernesto peeked his head out a bit, and Sam awkwardly waved. “Of course I know Sam!” Ernesto exclaimed. “Congratulations, by the way!”

Sam gave Ernesto a tight smile, but it was more because he was still worried about Jack than Ernesto himself. “Thanks, Ernesto.”

“Well, thanks for your help, man. We’ll keep lookin’. Gotta close ya up now.”

“Oh, sure thing, Dean. And one’a these days I’m gonna sing Gilbert and Sullivan ‘til you let me outta this place, okay?” He laughed, but Ernesto didn’t even sound mad. Dean laughed too as he put Ernesto’s case away, but grimaced as he turned back to Sam.

“Who the fuck are Gilbert and Sullivan?” He hissed, but Sam just shook his head.

“We still don’t know where the hell Jack is,” he sighed, and by now, Sam was getting tired. 

But he wasn’t going to bed until they had found the kid, so they wandered drowsily back through the bunker to the main hub, which was still buzzing with activity and preparations. They had to have missed something. Right? They had to have. Dean said something about needing a sandwich, that looking for lost boys made him hungry, so they drifted towards the kitchen, and that’s when they heard it. Dean stopped suddenly and put a hand to Sam’s chest.

“Hear that?” He asked, ears perked up. Sam listened closely.

He _did_ hear it.

“Does that sound like – “

“Yup,” Dean nodded, and they walked with a purpose into the kitchen, which had emptied out by now. Dean scanned it, and knowing every nook and cranny of the place knew exactly where he needed to go, following the little voice calling his and Sam’s names, and then walked right up to one of the cabinets under the sink and opened it up.

And there was Jack.

Sam’s heartrate slowed down monumentally, and he sighed with relief. Jack gave a little cry when he saw Dean, holding out his little hands as Dean reached in and pulled him out, settling him on his hip and bouncing him up and down a bit. Jack rubbed tiredly at his eyes as a few tears leaked out, and Sam just shook his head, reprimanding himself for not looking closer, for being such a dumbass. He had been right under their noses the whole time.

“Oh, Jack, Jack, _Jack_ ,” Dean drawled as Jack turned his face into his neck. Dean patted his back. “What were you _doing_ under there?”

“Nobody came and finded me!” The child shrieked indignantly, sitting back up to face Dean and throwing his hands out to the sides as if to say _you should have known! I was under there the whole time! Wasn’t it obvious?_ This was apparently the most ridiculous thing Jack had ever endured. “I hided and nobody finded me!”

“Jack,” Sam sighed softly. This whole situation made a bit more sense now. They were about to have a conversation they had already had a million times before. “Remember? You have to _tell_ people you’re playing hide and seek. We’re not going to know we need to find you if we don’t know we’re playing.” Jack heaved a great big sigh at this, a bit embarrassed he had forgotten.

“Did you get stuck?” Dean asked, and Jack nodded, pouting his lip. “That ain’t no fun. Was it?”

“No,” Jack sighed. “It wasn’t fun. Scary.”

“Good thing you won’t be doing it again, then.”

All three of their heads spun around at the new voice, and there was Cas standing in the entryway to the kitchen, smiling. Jack lit up at the sight of his father, and started bouncing up and down in Dean’s arms. Cas’s smile widened. All of Jack’s little concerns were forgotten, and the tears started to dry up as faint tracks on his cheeks, and all was well in his small world again. “You’re back!” He yelled. Right into Dean’s ear. He shushed him – it was too late for any kind of yelling.

“I’m back,” Cas confirmed, voice full of love for the little boy, and he held out his arms and Dean passed Jack over to his old friend. Jack threw his arms around Cas’s neck and settled there, breathing him in. Cas smelled a little bit like lightning, he thought; he smelled like the outside, and the outside was one of Jack’s favorite places. It’s where you could see the rabbits and the birds and the sunshine.

With Cas was one of his favorite places, too.

There was a marked difference in Cas these days. It wasn’t just his clothes, either; sure, he had kept the trench coat, said he’d probably hang onto it forever, but he had ditched the old suit recently. He had kept it, too, but he wasn’t going to be wearing it this weekend or anything. It was just a backup nowadays. Today the trench was over a grey pullover and jeans, and the dude had his hair all spiked up, and he was sporting what looked like _intentional_ scruff. Cool Dad alert on aisle nine! 

“How was Maine?” Sam asked.

“Wonderful. Much less rainy there than it is here,” he reported. “The people there are very nice. I met a couple that helped me fix my tire.” Cas grimaced. “I forgot how again.”

Dean rolled his eyes fondly. Sure, Cas may have changed his look a bit, but he was still…well, he was still Cas. And both brothers found that to be a comfort after all the recent changes. A little stability every now and then didn’t hurt. “That was nice of them,” he said as he wandered over to the fridge, back to his original mission: put food in him. 

“It was,” Cas agreed, and Jack solemnly nodded. “You both should know that your grandmother is doing well, but she’s walking with a cane now, so….“

Sam gave Cas a tired smile and leaned against the table, arms crossed. “Well, it took her ninety-ish years to ever have to need one, so that’s something. How’s she doing otherwise?”

“Good! She…does a lot of talking.”

“Sorry,” Dean apologized, not sounding sorry at all. “She does that. Old people like to tell stories.”

Meeting Millie Winchester had been something else. Sam and Dean had assumed she was dead, and if that she was somehow alive there would be no way she’d know anything about their lives. But string a few coincidences together, and they had tracked her down to her bed and breakfast up in Maine, which she still oversaw, and she was in pretty good shape for a woman of her age. She’d clearly taken good care of herself over the many years she had lived and looked great, even though she’d lost her husband, her son, and thought she’d lost her grandsons. Millie had a hunch when John disappeared that it could somehow be connected to what their grandfather, Henry, had done as a Man of Letters, and the fact that she had even known what that was had shocked her grandsons. Millie had just given them a coy grin and slyly said,

“Boys. _Really_. He was my husband. There are no secrets in a good marriage.”

And that had been that. She’d told them to stay in touch, and now she was here for the revelries. 

“She’s very excited to see the bunker,” Cas told them. “She says it was about time she paid you a visit after you driving to Maine so many times. And, well, it has a strong connection to Henry.”

“Well, good,” Sam grinned. “Think visiting might have to wait ‘til tomorrow, though. It’s been a long day.”

“Understatement,” Dean grumbled, the exhaustion finally starting to settle in as he sat perched on his stool and wolfed down reheated pasta with pesto chicken and tomatoes. Hadn’t exactly been what he was looking for, all healthy and shit, but it would do. (In all honesty, it wasn’t that bad.)

“Bedtime?” Jack asked, rubbing at his eyes. Cas nodded solemnly.

“I think so. Sounds like there’s been enough excitement for one day.”

“Yeah, think I’m gonna hit it, too,” Sam sighed. Dean raised the container, silently asking if Sam was hungry. “Nah, I’ll be good. More tired than anything.”

“Say goodnight to Dean, Jack.” 

Cas set the boy down, and Jack scampered over to Dean and hugged his legs. “’Night, Dean.”

Dean looked down at him and raised an eyebrow. “That’s all? No thanks for saving your life?”

Jack giggled. “Tanks, Dean.”

Well, shit. Wasn’t he cute? Dean grinned. “You’re welcome. Good night, kiddo.” He lightly tapped the kid’s butt with his slippered foot and sent him off to follow Cas and Sam back to the bedrooms. Jack toddled alongside two of his dads as they talked over his head, letting their voices wash over him, their conversation soft and pleasant. 

“The time in Maine really helped me to find what it was I wanted to say,” Cas told Sam with a small smile. “It took some time to figure out how to put it into words, but I’ve got it, I think. I know there are traditional ways people do this, and I did take those methods into consideration, but I wanted this to be special. I think it will go over well, and not get either too pious or saccharine.”

Sam nodded his head in approval. “Sounds good to me, Cas. We trust you.”

Cas seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. I think you’re going to like it, Sam.”

They stopped in front of Jack’s room, which was still right next to Sam’s. “Good.” He turned his attention to Jack. “Alright, buddy. You gonna go disappearing on us anymore?” Jack shook his head. “Good. Give me a hug.”

Hugs from your kid were the best – they gave you everything they got with them. Jack always squeezed super tight, the tightest, while Sam always felt as if he had to be extra gentle with him so as not to break him. “’Night, Sammy.”

“’Night, kiddo.” He pushed himself back up. “Don’t let him give you any trouble, Cas.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Cas said cheerfully as Sam retreated into his room. Jack looked up at his father innocently. “Will I, Jack?” He shook his head. “Alright. Ready to put your pajamas on?”

“The new ones!” Jack exclaimed, remembering the present from Donna. She had given them to him when she had arrived, all big smiles and ready and willing to spoil. Jack had flipped out when he saw them. There was a cute little brontosaurus on it, and the pants looked like scales, and they were _greeeeeeeeeeeeen!_

“How do I look?” Jack asked after he got them on (with quite a bit of help from Cas, since Jack still struggled with which holes his arms and head were supposed to go through), spreading his arms out to the side a bit and turning so Cas could do a full assessment of his nighttime look.

“You look great,” Cas surmised. “Donna did a wonderful job picking them out. You’ll have to thank her.”

“I did!”

“Then you should thank her again.”

“’Kay.”

Jack vaulted himself into bed, and Cas sat beside him, leaning against the headboard as Jack burrowed down. “Did I miss anything while I was gone?”

The kid shrugged. “Busy,” he said. Jack looked up at Cas with great big eyes. “Can you sing the song?”

xXx

Sam could hear their conversation through the wall. As he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, he could hear Cas reluctantly begin in on “Buckeye Jim.” It was one of Jack’s favorites. He’d heard it in _Fantastic Mr. Fox._ He asked Cas to sing it pretty much every night, and Cas would kinda half-ass it, but it’s not like Jack could tell or care, and he would usually join in. He didn’t always get all the words right, but it was cute.

“ _Way up yonder above the sky, a bluebird lives in a jaybird’s eye…._ ”

“Buckeye Jim, ya can’t go, go wheel and spin, ya can’t go, Buckeye Jimm _mmm_.” Cas’s millennia-old voice, formed of gravel and hard knocks, mingled with Jack’s, young and high.

It was sorta sweet.

There was suddenly a lump in Sam’s throat that he had to swallow past. Wasn’t too long ago that all of this would have been impossible to imagine happening for them. What had happened had happened, and for once, what had happened had been a gift. It was hard to trust, but…but they were trusting it. You had to eventually. That’s why all these people were at the bunker, in Lebanon; this was the next step in their lives. Sam had to continually remind himself that this was okay, to do something for himself, something that _he_ had wanted for a very long time now. This happiness wasn’t fake.

“Can we do one more?” He could hear Jack ask. “Peas?”

“Oh… _alright_ ,” Cas sighed. But he clearly didn’t have to have his arm twisted. They started stumbling and giggling through another one of Jack’s favorites: “With a Little Help from My Friends.” He seemed to struggle with this one even more, but mistakes were met with _oh, right!_ and more laughter. 

Two days, Sam thought.

Two days, and everything would change again.


	2. [& Tomorrow] Creeps in this Petty Pace from Day to Day

_Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,_

_Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,_

_To the last syllable of recorded time;_

_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools_

_The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!_

_Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,_

_That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,_

_And then is heard no more. It is a tale_

_Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,_

_Signifying nothing._

_~ Macbeth,_ Act Five Scene Five, William Shakespeare

Dean woke up at what was, for him, insanely early. He still felt a bit behind the curve, though, because as he stumbled into the kitchen to grab some coffee before going to work on the T-Bird, seemed just about everybody in the bunker was already up and running around and in the kitchen, so he stood dumbly in the entrance, silently wishing all of them out so he could get his coffee in peace. Guess the quiet would come when he got to the garage. Jody caught Dean’s eye and held up an empty mug.

“Yeah?” She asked, nodding her head at the coffee pot.

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “To go.”

“Got it.”

The garage was definitely a lot quieter, considering Dean was the only person out there. He hopped into the T-Bird and pulled it out a bit, parking it behind Baby, and gave it a good hose-down. Jack liked to “help” with washing the cars, and Dean was usually cool with it, even liked having him out here and spending time with him, but he didn’t think he had the wherewithal this morning to deal with a three-year-old. He had a timetable, and Jack would just derail that with question after question, and knocking over buckets of soapy water, or slipping and cracking his head on the concrete, which depending on the severity would either have to be treated with lots of hugs and _it’s not so bad, you’re fine_ , or a trip to the ER - another thing they didn’t need. 

With Cas back, it was simpler to watch the kid. Cas had got what he needed to get done all wrapped up while he was in Maine, and now he could chase Jack around outside, or let him “help” with…oh, Dean didn’t know…arranging flowers? Dean had no idea what they would be getting up to today – he hadn’t spoken to either of them. Jody had handed him his coffee, and he was out of there.

Dean slowly felt the tension in his shoulders abate as he got into his rhythm with his work. This was truly his element. He checked tire pressure and changed the oil and cleaned off all the mirrors. He shop-vac’d the interior and made sure the convertible roof was in working order and polished the chrome and paint ‘til it shined. God only knew what had driven them to picking this car as the one, what with its atrocious paint job the color of pea soup, but maybe Dean was just a bit biased. Maybe this was just what people back in the day liked. Hell, he _knew_ it was; he’d watched enough Barrett-Jackson auto auctions to know that.

“Hey.”

Dean looked up and saw Sam approaching, carrying a plate with chips and a sandwich. “Hey,” Dean greeted back, not so much looking at his brother as he was the food. It had probably been a mistake to not eat that morning, but he had been so desperate to get away from all the buzz that Dean had completely forgone it.

“Thought you might be hungry.” Sam grimaced a bit once he was closer. “Dude, have you looked in a mirror yet today?”

Dean ducked his head and rubbed at the back of his neck, a bit embarrassed. “Yeah, I know.”

“You look like hammered crap. How late were you up, anyways? And does your eye hurt at all? It wasn’t even bruised yesterday. At least it’s not swollen….”

Sam was getting that worked-up-and-worried look, so Dean put a hand on his shoulder and brought him back down to earth. “Just couldn’t sleep,” Dean shrugged. He closed the hood and knocked on it a couple times. “I was surprised, too. Kinda exhausted. And no, it doesn’t hurt.”

Sam’s mouth flattened in a sympathetic look. “Sorry, man. I know it’s been crazy. You’ve all been great, better than - ”

“Don’t,” Dean insisted, squeezing his brother’s shoulder a bit harder, stopping Sam before he could get started. “I don’t wanna hear it. You deserve it. Besides, this is what we’re here for. We want to help you out.”

“I know,” Sam whispered, then as if he had only just remembered why he had come out here in the first place, he handed Dean his lunch and took the opportunity to check his brother’s work on the car. He had to smile; he didn’t know another person on the planet who was as good with cars as Dean was. He needed to open up a body shop or something. “She looks great, Dee, thank you.”

“Ain’t no thing,” Dean mumbled around a full mouth. “But I’ve gotta agree – did some pretty good work. What _I_ can’t understand is why you’d wanna drive around in a neon green car. I coulda painted it.”

Sam snorted and simply shrugged his shoulders. “But it’s always been green, all the time it was parked here. I thought about it, but it just sorta felt wrong to paint it after all these years. Know what I mean? It’d be like if you suddenly painted the Impala hot pink.” Dean shuddered theatrically. Sam winked at him. “Plus it’s pretty sporty, don’t’cha think? I’ll look damn sexy driving around in this thing.”

Dean blinked, chewing slowly. “Sam? Don’t ever say that again.”

xXx

The rest of the day wasn’t so easy on Dean.

Well, it wasn’t quite so easy on anybody, to be fair. Things were really ramping up, and every time Dean caught a glimpse of either Jody or Alex, both of them looked as if they were about to explode from the stress. Sam was seriously going to owe them big time, that was for sure. Dean was going to _make_ his baby brother return the enormous favor, even though Sam was probably already thinking along those lines. It just seemed the right thing to do. 

Anyways, it felt as if there was even a rush to the air, an urgency in everyone’s breathing, and not to make it sound all dirty, but it seemed to Dean that they were all waiting for the eventual release coming tomorrow. However: after he finished his work on the T-Bird, put his dishes in the kitchen, took a shower, and changed his outfit, Dean realized he had nothing to do. 

That was bad.

Idle hands, and all that.

Thing was, though, no matter who he asked – Jody, Donna, the girls, Garth, Rowena, Sam, Cas, on and on – they all said the same thing: they had it handled. The food was handled, the decorations were handled, the venue…and on and on and on. _Just relax!_ They said easily. _You’ve already done plenty._

“Here – you can watch Jack for a while,” Cas offered. 

And then Cas plopped a smiling and sticky Jack on his lap. At first Dean thought it was something sugary that was sticking, but then he realized that it was glue, and that he was covered in glitter. On his hands, on his clothes, on his face, in his hair…it was _everywhere._ It didn’t seem to bother him one bit, but it was stuck on him real good, and now it was getting on Dean. He could figure why Cas might have been a bit eager to pass Jack off for a bit; seems he had been a bit of a distraction for whatever it was they were working on, and Dean highly doubted whatever they were doing needed to be as sparkly as the toddler on his lap.

“Oh, wow. Lookit you,” Dean said, sneering a bit. “What, didja faceplant into whatever you were doin’?”

“I decorated,” Jack simply explained. “It’s ready.”

“Yes, it is,” Cas agreed, at the same time Dean mouthed _what’s ready?_ The whole thing sounded very ominous. “You should take a bath now.” Well, Dean guessed that was what he was doing next. “I have to get back to helping. Dean will help you get clean.”

Jack was practically gushing. “Okay!” He slid off Dean’s lap, and Dean glared at Cas, who just smirked and shrugged his shoulders as his only reply.

xXx

Dean was already soaked.

Bath time with Jack was really a different kind of beast. It wasn’t hard getting him in there, but once he was in, it was a total splashfest, and getting him _out_ was a totally different matter. Even once the water had gone cold and he was shaking and pruny, he wanted to stay in and keep playing with his toys. It was kinda weird, but they supposed the kid just liked the water, and besides – it certainly wasn’t the _weirdest_ thing about him. The kid was a little Nephilim who thought it was funny to poof out of the room and make his fathers hunt him down. (This was somehow different from what had happened yesterday. He only flew when he knew he was being watched and could have fun with it; yesterday was simply hide-and-seek gone awry.) Yeah – as far as kids went, he was one of the weirder ones.

But he was one of the sweetest, too.

For now at least, the water was still warm, but it had only taken Jack all of two minutes to get Dean’s shirt almost completely wet. Kid thought he was so _funny_ , but today, it was sort of getting on Dean’s nerves, and he was having to work pretty hard to hide that.

“Look! Look.” Jack made little motorboat noises as he pushed the plastic tugboat through the water, back and forth. Dean glanced down briefly, but he was more focused on washing Jack’s hair _for_ _the third time_ in an attempt to get all this glitter out. The kid had somehow managed to get glitter in the weirdest of places, and the water was sparkling with it, but it was the hardest to get out of his hair. It was slowly coming out, though, so progress was being made. “You didn’t look!”

“I did,” Dean contradicted. “Kid, I’m a little more focused on your hair right now. Okay?”

Jack didn’t say anything, just pouted instead, and went back to his tugboat, still sadly making the little motorboat noises, with a bit more attitude injected into them to make the point that he was upset about being ignored, even though he was the _furthest_ thing from ignored right now. Jack was doted on by simply _everybody_ , and he knew it, too, so when he got the sense he was being snubbed, he made sure everyone knew how upset he was about it. Dean figured he needed to change tactics, then, soften up.

“What were you making?” Dean asked, spiking Jack’s hair up – he always liked that. Sam and Cas weren’t that fun.

“A picture,” Jack said shyly.

“Oh yeah? I bet it looks great. Who’s it for?”

“Lee-Lee,” he said.

Dean considered that as he finished up Jack’s spiky mohawk; he figured she would really like that. Everyone liked the gifts this kid gave. “Well, she’s going to love it.” Dean sat back a bit and examined his work, nodded a couple times. Jack put a hand up to his head and smiled. 

“Does it look cool?” He asked.

“Oh, hell yeah,” Dean grinned. “Ya wanna see?”

“Yes! Yes, yes!”

Since he was already wet, Dean pulled Jack out of the tub and held him up so he could see himself in the mirror. To say he was delighted was an understatement, but then Jack started squirming so Dean put him back in the tub so they could wrap this up. Jack grabbed his tugboat back up and started making the motorboat noises again as Dean started scooping water over Jack’s head to wash out the shampoo. 

“ _Ow!_ ”

But, seems he had forgotten an important step: usually Dean let Jack know so he could shut his eyes to keep the soap from getting in them, but he forgot to mention it, and Jack had been too preoccupied with playing with his boat to notice what was going on, and now he was rubbing at his eyes and starting to get all whimpering. Things really did turn on a dime.

“Shit, kiddo, I’m sorry – “

“You gots to tell me!” He shrieked, once again feeling that sharp sense of betrayal from a parent not finding you hiding under the sink, or getting soap in your eyes, or simply screwing up over and over again in the simple ways that seem to hurt a kid just so much. Sam and Cas certainly didn’t make mistakes like this; Dean may do the fun soapy hair, but does that mean anything when two seconds later the kid’s crying?

“Kiddo, it was an accident,” Dean tried to explain, while at the same time just plowing through and getting the rest of the suds out of his hair so he could have one less thing to deal with. Jack cried through it all, palms pressed to his eyes, and when Dean was done he smoothed back Jack’s hair and sighed once again, then pulled him out of the tub. “Jack, I just forgot. I’m sorry.”

“It hurted!” He sobbed, voice accusing and teeth chattering as Dean wrapped a towel around him, and then Jack curled up into a ball on the bathmat. Dean checked his watch; Jesus God, how was it already two in the afternoon? He felt as if he had just woken up, but no – he’d already finished the Thunderbird, and given Jack his bath. Things were really haywire right now, though. Usually Jack was napping by one, but with all the excitement, he’d stayed up and hung out with all these people making pictures and getting covered and glitter and having a grand old time, clearly, but he was worn out. Usually if Dean got soap in the kid’s eyes, he didn’t get yelled at. Jack was pretty docile as far as preschoolers went. Dean tried to remember that as Jack continued sniveling on the rug, rocking himself. So Dean smeared his hands down his face, feeling suddenly as if _he_ needed a nap, too, and he’d barely done a thing today. Who knew bath time could be so trying? He knelt beside the kid and looked at the eye peeking out through the towel. He couldn’t see the other one, but Dean got the impression he was getting glared at – hard.

“You ready to take a sleep?” Jack glared at him a moment longer before relenting and nodding his head a little. “Okay,” Dean breathed. “C’mon, then.”

They went slowly, Jack waddling next to Dean as they went down the hall, still wrapped in his little towel and scowling at the ground, eyes red with soap and tears. His feet made wet little _pap-pap-paps_ as they walked, and for once in the past week or so, that was the only sound that Dean could hear, and he welcomed the quiet. He sure had gotten boring in his old age – half the time all he wanted to do was sit around cat-napping and watching TV. It was easier on his body, anyways, even if becoming sedentary wasn’t so good on his weight or cholesterol.

He still looked good. He could still kick ass. So…whatever.

Once they were in Jack’s room and Dean was getting his bed ready, Jack went over to his dresser and pulled out his new dino pajamas so Dean could help him get them on and then he could sleep. Jack was a lot more tired than he wanted to admit. When he wordlessly held them out to Dean, he just raised an eyebrow. “Jack, it’s not bedtime. You’ll be up in a couple hours, you don’t need to put on your pajamas.”

“I want to wear them,” Jack insisted, thrusting them out again. Dean stared at him a moment longer. “ _Peas?_ ”

Goddammit, Sam had taught him that stupid puppy-dog look of his. Jesus. First the kid gets covered in glitter, then he gets Dean all wet and yells at him for accidentally getting soap in his eyes, and now he wants to wear his pajamas for the rest of the day. They were all such little things, and Dean knew that, but it’s those every-little-things that start to pile up, even if they don’t matter, not one bit. “Uh. Yeah, I guess. Okay.”

Jack finally smiled, and Dean got him in his new pajamas, worrying that this was going to become a thing, that Jack was going to want to wear his pajamas all day every day and become one of _those_ people, but he looked so happy in them and Dean figured that these were special circumstances – like people who wear their pajamas all day on Christmas. Dean had never done that, but he had heard of people doing it, so maybe this was a similar situation. Jack held his arms up, and Dean – knowing what that meant – picked him up and swung him onto the bed, and the kid bounced onto it in a fit of giggles. Sam and Cas didn’t do anything like that, either. 

“Dean?” Jack said, his voice a bit shy as he crawled under the blanket and Dean sat at the edge of the bed, getting him situated.

Dean sighed and gently tapped his forehead against Jack’s, and the two had a little stare-off. “Jack?”

Sheepishly, Jack said, “I want to wear my underwear to bed.”

Dean pushed a long breath out his nose. It was always one more thing.

xXx

With Dean getting Jack to sleep (and not in his underwear, mind you – Jack lost that particular battle) Cas was busy working in the library with Alex, Bess, and Jody on flower arrangements over cups of coffee that Alex had mixed with all sorts of creamers, claiming if she had to drink or even _smell_ another cup of basic black coffee, she would scream. Cas didn’t mind it, though; chocolate chip cookie coffee molecules were a sight different from the molecules of regular old black coffee. Change of pace. 

“Cas, you’re so good at this,” Bess said shyly, smiling in wonder at the arrangement he had created. “Yours look like art. Ours look like…flowers in vases.”

“Hey,” Jody defended herself playfully. “I think _not_. Don’t you think the ribbons add something? I think ours look nice, too.”

“I think Cas is just more meticulous,” Alex winked, and Cas smirked. 

“May be,” he shrugged. “I think I’d like to see Claire try doing this.”

Alex barked a sharp laugh. “Now _that_ would be something. Isn’t that right, Jody?” She looked over at Bess and explained to her that the last time Claire had tried doing anything crafty – Donna had dragged all of them to a Paint Nite – it hadn’t ended particularly well, even though she had been told step by step what it was she needed to do. Smart money was on her simply not paying attention.

Donna had been incredibly disappointed.

“I’m back!”

The bunker’s front door creaked open and then slammed shut, and a very happy Sam descended the staircase, his steps quick with his eagerness. Ten hours until tomorrow, roughly, and he was starting to feel the excitement really setting in. Usually when he was feeling this happy, he started looking over his shoulder, waiting for the bad awful thing to happen, but this time was different. This time, he was sure that everything was going to go smoothly – for once. 

And there were his friends and family putting flowers in vases! Spectacular! 

“Hey, Sam,” Jody greeted, looking up from her work. She smiled slowly when she saw what he had in his hand, slung over his shoulder. “Is that what I think it is?”

Sam could barely contain his toothy grin as he held up three _very_ long suit bags containing three brand-spankin’-new suits. No cheap fake fed threads for this occasion, no. No, this was big time, and they wanted to look it. They weren’t going to get them at first, figuring that what they already had would do just fine, but it was their grandmother who had insisted that an occasion this momentous required the clothes to match, and you just don’t say no to your long-lost grandmother. Ya just…don’t. Rowena had been the one to actually tag along with the trio to help them pick out the suits, almost being more helpful during the fitting than the woman taking their measurements (and had immediately pinched Dean’s bum when he opened his mouth to make a joke about his _measurements_ ). Sam had gotten to see them when he picked them up, and he’d never been one to really care about clothes or fashion, but seeing them this afternoon was another thing that had made all of this feel very real, and the more real all of this felt, the happier he got. And even he had to admit he, Dean, and Cas looked damn sharp in those things.

“You need to try them on!” Bess said excitedly, looking between Sam and Cas. “Go get Dean, we need to see them.”

“You don’t want to wait until tomorrow?” Sam asked.

“Of course not!” Jody waved the two men off. “Go, we wanna see!”

Cas gave Sam a little shrug, and they went back to the living quarters to find Dean and wrangle him into this little show, too. They found him in Jack’s room, sprawled out on his side and snoring in the bed while Jack was sitting curled against his abdomen reading one of his pictures books, giggling every now and then at something, though Sam was pretty sure Jack only knew a few words on sight and wasn’t actually laughing at any words in the book. It was a sweet scene, for sure, and Cas snapped a picture, but he forgot to put it on silent, and Jack snapped his head up and stopped kicking his legs up and down when he noticed Sam and Cas.

“I’m reading,” Jack whispered. “We are _hav_ ing _quiet_. _Time_.”

“How long have you been awake?” Cas asked, feeling a bit guilty for shoving Jack off on Dean when it was clear that the boy was in the mood to push the boundaries today, but what was he supposed to do – let _Dean_ make the flower arrangements? He didn’t think so.

Jack shrugged and made an _I don’t know_ noise. “Dean said I worned him out and then I went sleep for a while, but that got boring and now I’s awake again. Do you _need_ something?”

Sometimes, Jack seemed way beyond his years. He now looked the age he truly was, and had a mind to reflect that, but sometimes they would get a glimpse of the young man he was Before, and it was startling. This was one of those moments, with the way he asked the question and had that little squint in his eyes, pressed protectively up against Dean and tightly clutching his book not about zombies, but Harold and his purple crayon.

“We need you to wake up Dean,” Sam told him, and he solemnly asked, “Are you up to it?”

xXx

Of course Jack was up to it. Two seconds later, Dean was rudely awakened by a small child screaming his name and hopping on pop, which isn’t one bit cute, especially when your brother and best friend are standing above you laughing and telling you to get your ass up so you can try on a damn suit. 

“We got them _fitted_ , we know they fit,” Dean grumbled as he buttoned up his dress shirt. Sam pulled on his jacket while Jack ‘helped’ Cas with his tie. “Why’d ya have the kid wake me up for this?”

“Because Jody wants to see them, that’s why,” Sam said pointedly. 

“She’ll see them tomorrow.”

“Just suck it up, Dean.”

Examining himself in the mirror, Dean thought he looked worse than before he fell asleep, and grumpier than hell. That gorgon had done more damage to his face and his mood than he had thought. The adrenaline had worn off long ago, and the fact of tomorrow and all that it entailed was starting to set in. Dean thought he had been ready for all of this, but looking at himself now, with a bit of a shiner and a few more lines by his eyes than he had last night, and Sam and Cas behind him laughing at Jack dancing around in his new pajamas all excited that Dean had said he could wear them the rest of the day, he realized that no – he was far from ready. What else would explain why he had to get out of the bunker to go on that hunt? It had been a stupid risk, especially considering he had dragged Sam along right before his big day, and now he looked as worn out as he felt on a day-to-day basis, while Sam and Cas seemed to get better and happier by the day.

After Chuck, Dean thought things were supposed to get better. Easier. In many ways, they had. But it seemed to him that as life went on for the rest of his family, he was still getting dragged down and through the mire and muck. Just like always. 

As he finished doing his tie, Dean took one last long look at himself in the mirror, and for the first time in his life, what he saw reflected back at him was exactly what he expected. Because it wasn’t just him he saw – black eye, sleep-mussed hair, and all – no, but the rest of his family behind him, looking…new. But Dean had never felt older. Who knew giving a preschooler a bath would end up in an existential crisis? He turned around and Sam smiled at him.

“Hey, you look great!” He said genuinely. “Let’s go show the girls, huh?”

Dean smiled shakily. “Yeah, let’s do that.” Actually – no. He held up a finger. “But, uh, lemme grab somethin’ first – you guys head on out, I’ll be right there.”

Sam shook his head and muttered something to Cas about a _grand entrance_ , and Jack led them out of the room, strutting his stuff in his dinosaur pajamas, ready to steal the show. Dean, however, waited for them to get a good distance away before he snuck back to his room and shuck off the suit and changed back into street clothes, suddenly feeling hot and claustrophobic. He wasn’t quite sure what had come over him – yes, a crying kid and the stress of the upcoming event and all this _boredom_ he was feeling – but usually he could keep himself in check, keep it to a couple snarky comments and then move on. 

But this was different, he recognized.

Their lives were about to change. Forever.

And forever was such a long time.

So he bolted.

In the garage, the Impala and the Thunderbird were parked right in the center, and Dean’s first instinct was to hop in his Baby and get out for a bit, but then some gear in his head switched, and he swiveled to face the wall of motorcycles. He rarely got out on them, and he knew with how slick the roads were it was probably a stupid idea, but he had always operated on stupid ideas.

He hopped on one, only his wallet in his pocket, and tore out of there.

xXx

After everyone had fawned (mostly over Jack), Sam sent Cas to go see what was taking Dean so long.

“Sam!”

Oh, god – that was his urgent voice. Of course this was coming; Sam should have known – _did_ know, it was inevitable, he thought to himself, as he ran back into the living quarters and found Cas standing in Dean’s room, looking pissed off. Dean’s suit was lying on the bed.

“He bolted,” he growled out.

Sam deflated, and suddenly he felt really _stupid_ standing there with Cas in their brand new suits.

xXx

At a hole-in-the-wall called The Cantina, Dean sat at a corner table, back to the wall, already sort of regretting his decision, but the lure of the bottle was too appealing tonight. Dean tried not to think too hard; it seemed like the thoughts just wouldn’t stop coming today, but he was well on his way to becoming blissfully braindead for a few hours.

What was he going to _do_ after tomorrow?

He _was_ happy for Sam – he really was – but he couldn’t help but feel…well, it was gonna sound a little stupid, but he was feeling a bit left out. Cas and Jack were such a duo, and Cas could do no wrong in Jack’s eyes. Meanwhile, Dean forgot to warn him about soap in his eyes and made him cry, and lost him in the bunker. Sam shouldn’t have had to worry about that; he already had enough to worry about right now.

Oh, Sam.

Dean had thought that tomorrow would take longer to come than it did, but it had crept up on him, and when he had put on that suit…well, he supposed that was the final straw. But the final straw until what? Did he really think he was just gonna cut out forever? No, of course not, but he could get drunk and do his best to forget that after tomorrow, he won’t have any idea what to do with himself for the rest of his life. Tomorrow…

“Get you another?”

Dean snapped back to reality and focused on the waitress standing in front of him. She was a tiny thing, nice blue eyes, and she looked too innocent to be working in a place like this, so Dean figured she was probably tougher than she looked – maybe older, too, than her young face led him to believe. Any other night he might go for it, but…not tonight.

“Sure,” he shrugged, and she went off to grab him another Dos Equis, which were mostly water, but he supposed he was just pacing himself.

However, pacing himself was going to prove to be mighty difficult, because when the waitress came back to his table with his beer, she had a weird smile on her face – like she was worried about something and was trying to cover it up, but failing. “Thanks,” Dean mumbled.

“No problem. Uh,” she wiped her hands on her jeans, “there’s a couple of ladies at the other end of the bar who would like to buy you a drink.” She pointed, and Dean saw a couple of blonde cougars sitting there, and the first thought Dean had was that there was no way they weren’t going to freeze their asses off in those outfits, but then he realized that made him sound even older than they were. He was already out – might as well have some fun.

“Send it my way.”

xXx

The Impala was still in the garage, and the T-Bird, too. What was missing was one of the motorcycles, and Sam’s disappointment turned into concern. His brother was forty-one years old, he was an adult and could make his own choices, but he also couldn’t help but worry. It was wet and cold out there, and his brother had pulled a stunt by rolling out in a motorcycle. _Awesome_.

“Should we go after him?” Cas asked.

Sam looked to Jody, with her arms crossed over her chest and a wearily frustrated look on her face. She was pissed off, and there was a part of Sam that wanted to be as angry as she was, but another part of him that wanted to give Dean some grace. Nobody else seemed to want to afford him even that much, and Sam could understand – a lot of work had gone into making tomorrow happen, and this was definitely a monkey wrench in their plans. If nothing else, Sam just felt sad. He had thought Dean was happy for him, and maybe he was, but…but there must have been something that outweighed that happiness.

“No,” Jody said, her voice quiet but resolute. “Let him crawl home with his tail between his legs. He made his choice.” Her voice cracked a bit on that last word. Jody rubbed Sam’s back. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. He’ll come home, but I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Sam sighed. “She’s right, Cas. He probably just…needs to clear his head.” Sam nodded to reassure himself, but he was still having a hard time struggling to believe that. He just took off without a single word, no warning. Just…gone. And Sam wanted to know what it was Dean needed to clear his head of in the first place.

Cas ran his hands through his hair – a tick he’d picked up from Sam – then threw his arms down to his sides in frustration and anger. But he had to agree with Sam and Jody. Dean would come back in his own good time, and it wasn’t their job to mollycoddle him. “Alright,” he grudgingly agreed. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too, Sam.”

Sam gave him a tight smile. There really wasn’t much else to say that wouldn’t just be him repeating himself. “Thanks, Cas. C’mon – there’s still more stuff to get done.” Maybe helping with some of the hands-on stuff would help him get his mind off this. Besides – Dean’s homecoming wasn’t the only one Sam was looking forward to.

xXx

A couple hours and Dean was _sloshed_. Those ladies from the bar sure knew how to have a good time. It’s just that…well, their idea of a good time, it seemed, was watching Dean double-fist neon pink margaritas (heavy on the salt) while they cheered him on. They even amassed a bit of a crowd. Probably because when Dean got drunk, which he didn’t even think he could anymore, he got one of two ways: maudlin or _loud_.

Tonight, it was definitely the latter.

“Ready for another, Dean sugar?” Connie cooed. Connie had rock-solid breasts that kept pushing up against Dean’s shoulder as she leaned into him. Her mother (“ _Who’s this? Your sister?”_ ) was a little less forward with him, and her hair was bleached the same color as her daughter’s, but she had clearly taken care to not let her roots show. Dean appreciated the effort.

“Sure _thang_ , baby,” Dean crowed. 

Connie waved down the brunette waitress, who had really been a good sport all night long, but even in his stupor, Dean could tell that her patience was beginning to wear a bit thin. “Can we get another round over here, sug’?”

“Sorry, sug’,” the waitress said, her mocking tone probably going unnoticed. “’Fraid I’m gonna have to cut the big one off.”

“Wha’?” Dean slurred, and Connie and her mother both protested with him. “Nah, I’m…I’m good, I’m good. I’m good! I’m _great_. Bring it on!”

Mother and daughter started pounding the table, their pounding accompanied by the unoriginal and slurred chant of _Bring – it – on! Bring – it – on! Bring – it – on! Bring – it –_

On that last one, the table shook so much that one of their unfinished neon pink drinks tipped over and spilled across Dean’s lap. In his stupor, he actually took it fairly well, sorta looked down at his lap and went, “Ah, man,” and tried to swipe it off, but that wasn’t exactly effective. “Shit,” he drawled. “Makes it look like I pissed m’self.” Having decided what he needed most at that moment was napkins, Dean stood up, but a bit too quickly, because the room seemed to spin upon standing, which made him a _little_ nauseas. A hand came to steady him, but it wasn’t Connie or her mother, but the little waitress – who was a lot stronger than she looked.

“Either you take it outside or I call over that big lunk behind the bar,” she hissed in his ear, and considering his options, Dean staggered outside into the cold, which hit him pretty instantly and provided a bit of a sobering effect – and now his crotch was cold. Awesome.

“You throwin’ me out?” He called back to the woman. “Ya can’t. ‘Sides, I got friends in there.”

“They ain’t your friends,” the waitress said. “Sit down.”

She slowly guided him to sit on the curb, and then she sat down next to him. Things were happening very fast, and Dean considered her with a critical eye. “Why’re you still out here?”

“To make sure you don’t go back inside,” she said, cheeky.

“Don’t you gotta work…?” When she didn’t answer, Dean narrowed his eyes. “Who are you? Huh? _What_ are you?”

She ignored that last question. “Call me Gail.”

Gail. She didn’t look like a Gail, but okay. She was too pretty to be a Gail. Gails were…yuck. “Okay, _Gail_. Whaddya want? I can get myself home – “

“No, you can’t,” she said kindly. “Why’d you come here tonight?”

“Because…” Dean took a deep breath. He considered telling her because he was looking for a good time, a last hurrah, but Dean could barely lie to himself anymore, so why lie to her, a perfect stranger? “Because I don’t know what comes next.” He had no idea why he was still talking to her, or why he was spilling his guts, but here they were.

“Nobody does,” Gail shrugged. “We’re all just making it up as we go.”

Dean shook his head. For so long…for so long, his life had been in someone else’s hands. And looking back on it, he had hated so much of that life, but it was the only life he had ever known. Now they had the true free will they had been looking for all this time, and he didn’t know what to do with it. “You don’t get it. After tomorrow, _everything_ is gonna be different. Sam’s…Sammy’s movin’ on without me. He don’t need me no more. And Cas…Cas is _Super_ Cas or something now, and Jack is onto me being a shitty parent, I can tell, so…” He shrugged in defeat. “Guess I’m just whatever.”

Gail squinted. “Well, I don’t know who Sam and Cas and Jack are, but I doubt they’re moving on from you. Just ‘cause our lives look different over time doesn’t necessarily mean we leave every piece of ourselves behind. You’re not ‘just whatever,’ Dean.”

Dean’s head snapped up and the fact that she knew his name sobered him even a little bit further (though that wasn’t really saying much.) “How d’you know my name?”

“Your, uh, _friends_ were screaming it inside while they cheered you on,” she smirked. “Anyways…nobody’s just whatever. You’re a person, you’ve probably got a lot to offer.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Yeah _right_. Everybody in my life is moving on, and here I am, still a fuck-up at forty-one. I don’t know what I’m s’posed to do anymore.”

“Just because you don’t know what to do now doesn’t mean you never will. It’ll be okay, and your family will be, too.”

“Oh, _yeah?_ ” He scoffed. “How would you know?”

There was a beat of long silence where neither of them said anything, but Gail watched Dean while he stared out at the lot, trying to keep his breathing controlled so he wouldn’t lose the contents of his stomach. He didn’t know what was happening here. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Maybe Chuck was gone; maybe there were less monsters these days; but somehow, all of that just made his world more confusing. These were supposedly good things – so why couldn’t he just be happy?

“You wanna know how I know?”

“How?” Dean asked darkly.

“Because tomorrow, the sun will come up. And you get to do it all again.”

Dean blinked at her a couple times. At first, he thought that was bullshit, and right as he was about to tell her so, he stopped. Tomorrow he’d get to wake up and do it all over again. Huh. Okay. Something about that made sense. Well – of course it made _sense_. The sun comes up every day and life does go on. And he supposed that was what Gail was getting at; it was a simple thing, something straight from a Hallmark greeting card, but…yeah. Yeah! Tomorrow he’d…he’d do it all again. He’d keep doing it all over again until he figured something out. Or died. But hopefully he’d find a little purpose first.

And tomorrow…tomorrow was going to be great. Sam was so happy. Dean was happy for Sam. He needed to show him more of that.

“Right,” he breathed. “Live to see another day, and all that.”

“Right,” Gail winked. “I gotta go back inside. You need to call somebody to pick you up.”

“Right.”

“Be good, Dean.”

“Will do.”

Gail went back inside, and Dean pulled his phone out of his pocket. He wouldn’t bother Sam or Cas, or Jody – they were busy enough – and he needed to find a way to get the motorcycle home.

There were only two people he could possibly call.

xXx

“Hey, man!”

Garth’s voice was a little too cheerful and a little too loud for Dean right now, but he was glad to see him and Donna stepping out of her truck, not looking particularly angry, but more kind. It was a little pathetic, Dean realized, that he called probably the two nicest people he knew to come and bail him out, but he wasn’t quite ready to face the music just yet. 

“Hey, guys.”

“Looks like you flew the coop,” Donna chirped, giving him one of those Looks – little bit of a smile, but all business in the eyes. “What, you thought you would just have a party by yourself?”

“Well, Sammy didn’t wanna have one. So I guess you could say this one’s in his honor.”

“Not much of a party,” Garth drawled, looking around. All he could see was a drunk Dean Winchester sitting in a cornfield in front of a dilapidated old bar. “Kinda sad, actually.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “The hell’re you talkin’ ‘bout?”

Donna held out her hands and helped Dean up, and he started dusting himself off as he watched them, confused. Garth and Donna exchanged concerned glances. “Well, Deano, you’re sorta just sittin’ out here by yourself.”

Dean swiveled around and saw what was once The Cantina was now…well, empty. Just the shell, none of the people, none of the lights, none of the music. He started shaking his head. “No…no, no, this isn’t right. There was…there was a bar here, with people, and-and…I was _in_ that bar. There was…Connie…and her mom…and Gail….”

“Dean, there’s nobody else here,” Donna said gently. “And that place looks like it’s ‘boutta collapse any minute now.”

This didn’t make any sense. Or – well, it made sense in the sense that Dean’s life never made any sense. Leave it to him to wander into a bar that was never there in the first place. But it had been! Connie and her mother and Gail and the big lunk behind the bar had all been very real; the patrons, the booze – the booze had obviously been real because he was skunked – it had all been _real_. But the longer Dean looked, the less real it became. All there that was there was cornfields and the motorcycle, and Donna and Garth at his side.

“You gotta believe me,” Dean said, feeling a little hysterical, but more importantly, embarrassed. Garth and Donna were looking at him like a kicked puppy, and Garth gave him a kind look and put a hand on his shoulder.

“We believe _you_ believe it was there,” he said, and if Dean had better control of his faculties, he would have rolled his eyes. Garth turned to Donna. “I got this one – sure you don’t just wanna leave that thing here?”

She waved a hand. “I can handle ‘er. You’re lookin’ at one experienced motorcyclist here! I used to patrol on one, don’t’cha know!”

Dean did know. That’s why he had told Garth to bring her along when he called. Garth, for his part, looked impressed. “Donna, you are one bad B!”

“And don’t you forget it!”

Donna laughed, and then Garth laughed, and then Dean said his head hurt and he wanted to go home.

xXx

“You holdin’ up okay, Dean?”

No. “I’ll be okay,” he slurred. “That bar was really there, man. I mean – lookit me.”

“I did,” Garth assured him. “Look, I get it, dude. Change is scary.”

Dean held back a groan; Garth was a great guy, but he could get seriously preachy. All he wanted to hear him say was that he believed him. “Garth,” Dean cut in tiredly, the mere act of speaking nearly driving him to tears, “please just…tell me you believe me.”

Garth didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Donna was just ahead of them, shepherding them home, both her and Garth taking it easy on the slightly slick roads through the darkness. They didn’t even have the radio on; Garth had offered, but the headache was already starting to hit Dean, and he had a feeling tomorrow morning wasn’t going to be so fun. But he’d brought it on himself.

“I believe you,” Garth finally said, and Dean could have wept. “If you say it was really there, then I believe you. Even if nobody else will.” He glanced over at his buddy. “But at the end of the day, it don’t really matter if it was there or not. What matters is that you left in the first place.”

“It ain’t like I wasn’t gonna come _back_.”

Garth shrugged. “We didn’t know that. _Sam_ didn’t know that. You just disappeared without a word, and nobody knew where you were or where you were going. You didn’t pick up your phone – “ Dean checked his phone. He hadn’t heard it ring or felt any buzzes, but it was entirely possible he’d just missed them because everyone was being so rowdy. That, or he really had been in some supernatural dead zone. But looking at it now, he could see he had texts and calls from just about everybody, from Jody and Donna and Cas and Claire and Garth and, yes, even Sam. Dean had really been an ass the past few days, first for insisting on the gorgon hunt, and then with this little stunt. All because he couldn’t handle what was coming. “ – I mean, people were mostly worried. Jody’s pissed, though. So’s Cas. For making Sam worry right before the big day.”

“I know,” Dean sighed, feeling just miserable about it. He leaned his head against the cool window and closed his eyes. “Gail said…she said that things would be okay.”

Garth narrowed his brow. “Who the heck’s Gail?” Might as well humor him, he figured.

“The waitress,” Dean explained impatiently. “At the bar, her name was Gail. She knew my name and everything, and I told her…I told her I don’t know what the fuck I’m s’posed to do with myself no more. Pretty damn pathetic, right?”

Garth shrugged. “I dunno. I get it. Sometimes there’s nothing scarier than freedom.”

Jesus fuck! Dean was too drunk for statements like that. How the hell was Garth able to just pull something like that out of his ass like it was nothing? Since when was he full of these philosophical platitudes? Always? Probably always. Dean just hadn’t been paying attention. “Well, she said…Gail said that it’s okay because you get to…wake up and try again. Does that make sense? Like…the sun comes up each day?”

“Yeah, I get where she’s comin’ from, I think. Live to try again another day.”

“Exactly!” Dean exclaimed. “Right! But…but that’s too easy, right? Nothin’ in my life’s ever been that easy. Ever. Why would it start now?”

_Maybe because you finally won_ , Garth thought. _Maybe because you guys deserve it._ All heroes had to ride off into the sunset, after all. Some got happier endings than others, so Sam and Dean…they’d lucked out. Dean just wasn’t seeing it yet. “It’s just gonna take some time to trust it. You gotta start somewhere. So…start with tomorrow. Tomorrow’s about family. And family helps each other out.” Garth risked looking over at his passenger. “Let somebody help _you_ for once, Dean. There’s more to you than saving lives you don’t get to live.”

Sam and Dean had given so many pieces of themselves away over the years that by the time they had defeated Chuck, there was hardly any of them left. It was time to start rebuilding. They were people, real people, with real freedom now. The rest of Sam’s life started tomorrow – so why not Dean’s? 

“I’ll try,” Dean conceded softly. Garth took that as a win.

xXx

Donna pulled into the garage first, and Sam could feel his nerves ratcheting up – the first of many arrivals tonight. A few moments later, Garth pulled in with Dean sitting shotgun, and Sam could already see how miserable he looked. Jody glanced up at him, looking a bit sour, and Sam shrugged tiredly; he had no idea what to expect when Dean stumbled out. Donna parked the bike and joined the duo, blowing out a breath and shaking her head, looking a bit frazzled from the elements herself.

“Mission accomplished,” she said, grinning tiredly. Donna looked up at Sam. “He wasn’t in great shape when we found ‘im.”

“Where _did_ you find him?” Jody asked.

“Off the interstate, completely loaded,” Donna said. “Don’t know how he’s doin’ now, but I don’ think they had to make any stops. He seemed pretty confused – wandered into a buncha dead corn and a bar that looks like nobody’s been there in thirty years. I can’t tell you what he got himself into, Sam, but…”

“He’s not doing well,” Sam finished. Donna gave a reluctant shrug. “Thanks, Donna.”

Sam hugged Donna tight and assured her and Jody that he and Garth had it from here. Cas was back in the living quarters trying to get a very excited Jack down for bed, and he hadn’t really wanted to see Dean, anyways; he was still pretty pissed off. Sam wandered up to Garth’s car, where he had the passenger door open and was talking quietly to Dean, who looked a bit reticent to move, let alone get out of the car. Sam nodded to Garth and knocked on the hood a couple times, and Dean looked up at him with sorry, bloodshot eyes. Sam whistled lowly.

“Donna wasn’t kidding,” he said. “You do look pretty rough.”

“Sam…” Dean’s voice caught in his throat, but he forced himself to say, “I’m sorry.”

Yeah, Sam could see that. He bet he’d be even more sorry in the morning. “Feel better?”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Not really.”

“Tell Sam what we talked about.”

Dean didn’t really appreciate getting talked down to, but he figured that’s the least he deserved for bolting. “This ain’t about you, Sammy. It ain’t. This one’s on me.”

Sam pushed a long breath out his nose and looked to Garth. That wasn’t all of it, and Garth tried to silently tell Sam that there was more to this story, but it might take some time for Dean to be ready to tell him the rest. Winchesters didn’t really do feelings all that well. Sam looked back down at his brother. The rest could come later. “Let’s get you to bed. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”

Garth and Sam each held out a hand to Dean, and they hauled him to his feet. “I got ‘im,” Sam said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, ain’t the first time.”

There had been other times like these, and harder than this. Dean had done the same for Sam before, too, and the act of helping each other to carry their burdens would likely never change, no matter how pissed off they were at each other, or how ridiculous one thought the other was. They passed Cas in the hall as he gently pulled Jack’s door shut with a soft _snick_ , and he looked up at the sight of Dean stumbling down the hall as Sam kept a guiding arm around his shoulder. Cas didn’t want to say anything, but Dean planted himself, making Sam stumble a bit. Dean looked to Cas with sorry eyes.

“Tell…tell the kid I’m sorry about earlier.”

Cas narrowed his eyes, puzzled. “Sorry for what?”

“’Bout the soap in his eyes.”

Sam and Cas looked at each other, exhausted. There was a story here, Cas knew, but he didn’t push it. Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow, either. Maybe not ever. This time…they maybe would just have to let this one go, hope it was a fluke. Hope it was the last time. Sam sighed. “C’mon, man. Bed.”

xXx

Sam closed Dean’s door then continued to stand there, face buried in his hands. He wanted to be mad…but he couldn’t find it in him. He was upset, sure, but the thing was…he was pretty sure he knew what this was about, and he could get where Dean was coming from. Sam had wrestled with the issue since before he had even gotten the ball rolling on all of this, always worried about what would happen to Dean. Eileen – and others – had to remind him time and again that what made Sam happy made Dean happy, and he knew that to be true. Hell, Dean was one of the biggest reasons he felt okay doing this, one of his biggest cheerleaders.

_“She doing okay?”_

_“Yeah. I guess.”_

_“You guess?”_

_“If she needs something from me, she'll tell me. We have an agreement.”_

_“You have an agreement? That's adorable. Look, man, I didn't want to say anything, okay, 'cause I was kind of in...in a bad place, and, uh, yeah, I didn't want to jinx it or whatever, but, you know, I tried the family thing, right?”_

_“Yeah, me too. And that's not for us.”_

_“No, not really. But I'm just saying if it was to work…Eileen, you know, she gets it. She gets us. She gets the life. She's hot.”_

_“Dean. I mean, I'm not even...”_

_“Look, all I'm saying is you...you could do worse, okay? And she could certainly do better. Like, so much better. I'm happy for you, Sammy.”_

Dean was one of the biggest reasons Sam had gotten up the nerve to do this, so on the one hand, it was hard for him to comprehend this breakdown. On the other hand…Sam knew this had nothing to do with him and Eileen, and everything to do with Dean feeling as if he wasn’t going to be needed anymore, when nothing could be further from the truth. But there was no getting that through to him tonight – he needed to sleep it off.

There was a gentle tap on his shoulder, and Sam turned around and instantly his posture relaxed as he came face-to-face with Eileen, who was beaming up at him. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said back, rocking on his feet. He suddenly was having a hard time containing himself. “You’re back.”

“I am.”

For a few moments there, Sam and Eileen just stood outside Dean’s room playing coy with each other, leaving the obvious things unsaid, playing their lovers game, but Eileen decided pretty early on to quit playing the game and she got up on her tiptoes and pulled Sam down to her until they were met halfway, kissing, and Sam couldn’t help himself from cupping her cheek in his hand. When they broke, Sam was feeling all smiley, which is…not exactly a word he would ever use to describe himself.

“So – how did it go?” He asked. Eileen gave him two thumbs-up.

“I feel…so stupid,” she shrugged, sheepish. “And girly. It’s such a small thing, but…” She picked up a bag she had set on the floor. “A day’s drive is a small sacrifice to make for the perfect shoes.”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh a bit. After everything, it all came down to shoes. But Sam wanted Eileen to have everything she wanted, and if a pair of shoes could bring it all together for her, then that was a no-brainer. Sam reached for the bag, curious, but Eileen playfully pulled it back – as if she could keep anything out of his reach, but Sam got the message. “C’mon, not even a peek?”

Eileen looked aghast. “No! It’s all going to be a surprise. You only have to wait one more day.”

“Oh, al _right_.” Sam felt like…like a giddy schoolboy or something, just so unlike himself, but in the best way. He looked down at his feet then back up at Eileen through hooded eyes, and he nodded down the hall towards his room, which was now also Eileen’s. “Um. If you wanna, we could…”

He trailed off, and Eileen bit back a smile. “Sounds like bad luck to me.”

Sam couldn’t help rolling his eyes. “You’re kidding, right?” When Eileen just primly shook her head, he gave a full-bodied sigh. “You’re so mean to me.”

“But just think of how _sweet_ tomorrow night will be for waiting,” she winked, and Sam snorted with laughter. She pointed at the door behind him. “Is he – “

“He’ll be fine,” Sam said quickly. “It’s a long story.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Not tonight.” He didn’t know if it was really anything worth rehashing. Dean sometimes pulled shit like this. Sam just hoped that this would be the last time. Life – their lives – were marching on. Changes needed to be made – and that was actually a good thing. Dean just couldn’t quite see it yet. “You’re really gonna sleep in your old room?”

Eileen just grinned and kissed Sam goodnight in response. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sam sighed and fondly shook his head as he watched her leave. “See ya tomorrow.”


	3. [& Tomorrow] Never Knows

_But listen to the color of your dreams_

_It is not leaving, it is not leaving_

_So play the game "Existence" to the end_

_Of the beginning, of the beginning_

~ “Tomorrow Never Knows”, The Beatles

When Sam woke up, feeling better than he had the night before, the first thing he did was look at himself in the mirror and remind himself,

“You’re getting married today.”

xXx

It was hard, waiting.

The ceremony was scheduled for four, and then there would be dinner and the reception afterwards. There was going to be quite the crowd, by their standards, and Sam figured he would owe Jody big time when this was all over. Sam decided he’d continue to do what she told him to do, which was stay out of the way, but when he went to the kitchen to grab some coffee, Jody and Donna were already in there with Dean, wearing robes and their hair pinned up, looking a bit harried. Dean was looking…not great yet. Hungover, and maybe a little embarrassed.

“Sam!” Donna greeted, brightening when she saw him, and of course she had to give him a great big hug – really squeeze the daylights out of him. “Oh, big day! Big, big day!”

“Sure is,” he breathed, smiling at her. 

Sitting down with his brother, who had still barely acknowledged him, Jody set down breakfast in front of him, a big veggie omelet with potatoes and sausage on the side. Yeah – Jody must have been up early. “You,” she said, jabbing a playful finger at Sam, “eat. And _you_ ,” she said a bit more dangerously, looking at Dean, “be good.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean said solemnly, giving her a little salute. 

Jody eyed him for a moment longer before nodding once and looking back over at Donna. “Donna, we should probably start getting ready. Sam, you, too – it’s gonna take longer than you think, alright, mister?”

Sam looked at Dean out of the corner of his eye, then sheepishly at Jody. “Yes, ma’am,” he parroted, and Dean snorted.

Once they were alone – for what felt like the first time since they had gotten back from the gorgon hunt – Sam started searching for something to say. He was torn between chewing him out and just moving on, so he supposed maybe a little bit of both might be appropriate. “How you feeling this morning?”

“Pretty rotten,” he growled tiredly. “Coffee’s helping a bit.”

Sam shook his head. “Guess that’s what you get for having a bachelor party without the bachelor,” he chastised, nudging Dean’s shoulder with his. 

“Sam, I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Sam nodded. “You know what I’m gonna say next, though, right?”

“That I should’ve talked about it,” Dean said softly, staring down at a spot on the counter as his cheeks flushed. “That you’re always here for me and whatnot.”

“Sounds about right.” Sam pushed some of his potatoes around on his plate. He kinda wanted some ketchup for them, but he didn’t want to get up for it. “Ya know, that’s always gonna be true,” he added gently. “That’s never gonna change.”

Dean, who had been picking at the belt of his robe, stopped worrying at it just long enough to look up at Sam, smirk, and say, “I know.” He frowned and went back to picking. “It’s just…well, I don’t know what’s gonna come next.”

Sam snorted. “We never do. Dean, you…” He blew out a breath and shook his head. “You don’t need to figure it out right now. Just take some time for yourself, fish for ten hours a day, play with Jack – you know. Retiree stuff,” he snickered, and Dean popped him hard in the arm. “Ouch! Jesus!”

“I’m forty-one,” Dean reminded him. “ _Forty-one_. Not seventy-one.”

Sam softened again. “Yeah, but…someday, we will be, now.”

Dean smothered a grin into his hand. Yeah – maybe someday, they would be. Not today, though – and today was already going by fast. Looking over at the clock above the bulletin board, it was already past nine, and according to Jody and Donna, they had already been up since before seven – Eileen, too, and pretty much everyone else, as well. Sam and Dean had been allowed to sleep in, which _Sam_ certainly deserved, but Dean didn’t. He had probably deserved nothing less than a bucket of water and the bullhorn at 0600, but he’d been spared. Probably because he was so pitiful. 

“Well,” Dean said, pushing himself up with a bit of effort, “for now, we’ve got today to deal with.” He clapped Sam’s shoulder on the way out.

“ _Deal with?_ ” Sam repeated, swiveling on his stool and giving Dean the hairy eyebrow, but Dean just shook his head.

“In a good way,” he amended. “It’s gonna be a good day, Sam. C’mon – let’s get you ready.”

xXx

The brothers once again found themselves in the shower room once again – no beers this time, though not for lack of trying on Dean’s part – bantering back and forth about anything and everything besides the wedding – though not for lack of trying on Sam’s part. He felt like an idiot for leaving this question until the last minute, but he hadn’t really been sure if he’d wanted to ask until now. It’s just that Dean seemed to sense every time he tried to bring it up, and then he’d change the subject.

“You know, there was something I wanted to ask you – “ Sam would start (and okay, maybe it was a bit obvious by his wording that he was trying to be serious, but still – c’mon), and then Dean would take in a sharp breath and say something like,

“Glad we were able to talk Rowena out of those bowties – that would’ve looked stupid as hell.”

Or,

“You’re gonna love drivin’ that car. Might not have any leg room, but it’s gonna run like a dream.”

It was at some point between buttoning up their dress shirts and applying their cologne that Sam finally got right to the point without any of the prologue and said, “Dean, I know it’s kinda late to be asking, but I was sorta wondering if you’d maybe consider possibly being my best man,” all in one big, unsure rush.

Dean set down his electric razor, running a hand over his chin and the light layer of scruff he’d left there – just enough to make it look intentional and not like he’d been too hungover to shave. “You’re right – it is a little late to be asking,” he agreed. “Thought the two of you weren’t going in for that.”

They weren’t; Sam and Eileen had decided to forego the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, the flower girls, the expensive photographers – it was a simple wedding because that was what they wanted, and it’s not like they knew all that many people. Besides – pretty much everyone they knew and liked would already be there anyways. They had the church and the reception hall and a little Nephilim boy that they had very bravely entrusted to give Cas the rings when it came time. It was a wedding that was being put on by people who hardly ever went to weddings, so it had been a real group effort with one Jody Mills at the helm of it all. Quick and dirty, the way hunters did everything. Though, maybe not quite _dirty_ …it’s just an expression, is all.

The thing is, it was still a _wedding_ , and Sam had his best friend doing the ceremony, his kid would have the rings, and the girl…well, the girl was the one he realized a while ago that it had all been leading up to her all along. Honestly! There would always be pieces of himself left with Jess, with Amelia, pieces that he would always keep tucked away safely in his heart – but the things we want change as we grow up, and, it seemed, he had simply been waiting for her.

But that still left one important piece missing, and that missing piece was his brother. Dean needed to be up there to complete the picture.

“We’re not,” Sam said. “But…bits and pieces,” he mumbled. “We’re going in for bits and pieces of… _that_. If you know what I’m getting at.”

Dean nodded once. “I do. But I’ve already made enough of a spectacle of myself this weekend. This isn’t about me – it’s about you and Eileen, and that’s the way it should be. I’m just a distraction.”

Sam tried to smile, be kind. “But you basically already _are –_ “

“Am I?”

“ _Yes_. You’re the whole reason I even got up the nerve to do this.” Sam looked himself straight-on in the mirror as he adjusted his tie. “You even threw a bachelor party in my honor,” he said dryly. “Unless the gorgon hunt counts.”

Dean couldn’t help the smirk – but he stood his ground. “Somebody needs to watch Jack, make sure he hits his mark. You know he gets distracted by just about everything.”

Sam was quickly realizing this wasn’t a fight he was going to win. Dean was feeling wounded and exposed, and it was best to let him lick his wounds at times like this. It would still be a good day, a good, good day. It was going to be a _good_ day, and that was consolation enough for Sam – more than enough. Dean would still be right there, front row, and that was pretty much the same, wasn’t it?

xXx

“ _Wed-_ ding! _Wed_ -ding! Gonna be a _wed-_ ding!”

“Yes, Jack, but let’s not be so loud about it.”

But Jack’s good mood and enthusiasm could not be deterred. Not that Cas wanted that, but there was already enough commotion going on throughout the bunker as is, and people were starting to slowly filter out with decorations and centerpieces in tow, and this was probably going to be Jack’s only chance to see Eileen before the big show, and he wanted to give her the gift he had made her yesterday. Still in his new pajamas, Jack stopped abruptly in front of Eileen’s door and knocked on it. There was quite the commotion inside, a…girly sort of commotion, which Cas could best describe as the excited, frenzied tittering of joyful voices overlapping each other. Cas was surprised they had even heard Jack’s polite knocks, but after a few moments of patiently waiting, the door to Eileen’s room opened.

 _Hello!_ Jack signed, the exclamation points obvious in his demeanor. _You home! I have present for you!_

Eileen looked over to Cas with an impressed look on her face. “Someone’s been practicing,” she said, still signing for Jack’s sake.

“Yes, he has,” Cas spoke and signed back. “He’s a quick study.”

Inside Eileen’s room, Cas could just see past her to see Jody, Donna, Alex, Claire, Patience, and a few others peering back at him, trying to remain inconspicuous as they tried to see what was going on. Cas saw dresses, including a bridal gown hung on the opposite wall, and the room smelled perfume-y. This wasn’t where they were getting fully dressed and ready, Cas recalled, but it seemed like there was a sort of…preparation for the preparation going on. 

Jack thrust his gift for Eileen towards her, his masterpiece from yesterday that had resulted in him getting covered in sparkles. It was a card covered in not just glitter, but the front had his little handprints all over it, and when Eileen opened it she found a sweetly crude drawing of herself and Sam staring back at her, with the sun smiling down on them. Jack had also added a rendition of himself, the artist, sort of floating above the soon-to-be newlyweds and seeming to smile down upon them as well. He couldn’t quite write yet – reading was a little easier for him, but they were working on his motor skills (which was a bit difficult for Sam and Dean to help him with because Jack seemed to favor his left hand…best leave that alone) – but with Cas’s help yesterday he had been able to write _To: Lee-Lee_ (which was what Jack called Eileen because that seemed to be easiest for him to say) _From: Jack_.

“’S like gettin’ a new mom!” Jack had said enthusiastically, stood up on Cas’s thighs so he could reach up and over the table as he frantically worked on his art yesterday.

The concept of a wedding was more tangible to Jack than the concept of marriage, but since Cas had never been married, he could probably say the same for himself. He knew that today was the big day that two members of his family would stand up in front of all the rest of his friends and family and kiss each other, and that would somehow alter something about them and their relationship. Cas had told him, however, that they would still be a family, and that could never change.

“You have a mother,” Cas had reminded Jack.

“Yeah,” Jack allowed, still working. “But she’s in Heaven. I need a mommy for here.”

A mommy for here – what a concept. Jack liked giving wet, baby-sweet kisses to the picture of his mother that was by his bed, but a drawback of the change Jack had gone through was that his mother was now more of a concept, and he couldn’t seem to remember going to Heaven and actually meeting Kelly, at least not yet. It was possible he never would. But he did seem to know that he loved her even without remembering meeting her, which was a beautiful thing in and of itself. He did have questions, though, about how he could have three dads but no moms – how did that work? Because in reality, Jack had many fathers even just biologically, but thinking about that made people’s heads hurt, so the way it was explained to him was that a father can be more than just the man who helps make you, but the men who raise you once you’re in this world, who love you without question. The path to that unquestionable love was a bit harder for Sam and Dean than it was for Cas, but Jack can’t remember that time in his life, and that one was probably for the best.

Jack was still adamant about needing a mother, though, one that was tangible and he could talk to. They tried explaining that he had one, that she loved him even though she wasn’t here, and that you can be just as happy with just dads. But a mother fit into Jack’s sense of family, and Eileen seemed to fit into his vision – and now that she was marrying one of his dads, that _must_ mean that she would now be his mommy-for-here.

By the soft smile on Eileen’s face, Cas finally considered that maybe that wasn’t so far-fetched an idea.

xXx

“How you doin’, Cas?”

Coming down the hall was Dean; his eyes were a bit sunken and bruised, and he still had that butterfly-bandaged cut near his temple from the gorgon hunt, but he had showered and shaved and had his suit on and looked ready to go. (Truth be told, he was feeling a _little_ nauseas, but it was already better than it was when he had woken up, so that was almost a non-problem; the headache still wasn’t great, but with a few Tums and aspirins, he was getting there.) Cas gave him a little wave. He was still upset with him, but not as much as he had been yesterday, and Cas reminded himself that this was a new day – a special day – and that his old friend deserved his forgiveness as well as his ire. They would all have the time to figure out what their new lives looked like…after today.

“I’m alright.”

Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “Not nervous?”

Cas rolled his eyes fondly. “I’m not the one getting married.”

“No,” Dean drawled. “That’s this one here.” He tapped Eileen on the shoulder, and she looked up and smiled at him. “Sorry I didn’t get to see you last night.”

Eileen nodded in understanding, and Dean was endearingly grateful to her. “It’s okay.” She knew the story – Donna had spared no details, and Sam had sent her a text (since she was being a saucy minx and didn’t want him to see her until it was Time) to be a little extra nice to her soon-to-be brother-in-law. She’d rip him for it later – maybe after the honeymoon – but until then, it was no tall order. Eileen really liked Dean, and she understood where his frustration and fear was coming from, but she didn’t like him worrying their friends, their family, and her husband.

Eileen just couldn’t get over that. Over the past several months of putting all of this together, ever since they had gotten engaged, she would sometimes kick that word around in her head: husband. It was a loaded word. It was a loaded situation they were getting themselves into, husband and wife, but it kicked up the butterflies in her stomach. Eileen had never seen herself in this position in the past, but now it was _here_ , she was going to be Sam’s wife, but that wasn’t all she was going to be. She didn’t know how today was going to change her, was going to change Sam, was going to change the relationship they had, but she wasn’t scared. She was the opposite of scared. She was ready.

In all embarrassing honesty, Eileen had been waiting for this day since the day she met Sam.

xXx

Yes – _the day she met him_. Don’t laugh.

xXx

“Shit!” Dean looked down at Jack in surprise, and Jack looked back up at him, a bit startled. “Jack, we need to get you ready.”

Jack’s eyes lit up and he smiled real wide. Cas raised his eyebrows at Dean, but Jack was now excitedly jumping up and down, and Eileen cocked her head in confusion. “You mean, he _won’t_ be wearing dinosaur pajamas to my wedding?”

“No,” Dean said emphatically around a laugh. “No, we’ve got somethin’ real special planned, don’t we, kiddo?”

“Yeah! It’s – “

Dean scooped him up and threw Jack over his shoulder. “Well, don’t spoil the surprise! C’mon, we gotta hustle.” And they rushed down to Jack’s room, Jack bouncing and giggling all the way, leaving Cas and Eileen to simply look at each other and shrug.

xXx

“…Bess and Garth grabbed the decorations, and I sent Alex to go pick up Mildred and your grandmother. Claire and Donna are shuttling the food, and Rowena said that she wanted to cleanse the church…? I don’t know about that, but she’s already there, and I think she took a few bodyguards.” Jody raised an eyebrow. “Y’okay with that?”

Sam couldn’t help the smirk. “As long as they blend, I think we’ll be okay.”

“If you say so.”

The two of them had wound their way through the bunker and to the front door during their little walk-and-talk, the place starting to feel a bit more empty as people started to leave, and that was another one of those little markers in this weekend that made it feel all the more real, and Sam felt that little flutter deep down. A good one, though – finally, these good flutters. Once Jody was out the door, it was going to be him, Dean, Cas, and Jack. Eileen was already gone. This was really _real_.

Jody stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned on Sam and did her Jody thing, meaning she was straightening and smoothing and inspecting one last time to make sure he looked just so. She stood on the first step and smoothed out the shoulders of his suit. “You look good, Winchester,” she grinned, and Sam ducked his head and felt himself blush. “And you know how I feel about the beard,” she winked.

“Well, you’re not alone on that one anymore,” Sam confided. The whole reason he’d grown it back was because Eileen had casually mentioned she liked it. Also, one less thing to worry about in the morning. “I’ll see you there?”

“Of course you will.” Jody kissed his cheek and then started up the stairs. “And don’t be late!”

xXx

Jack looked at himself in Dean’s mirror, grinning from ear to ear. He looked great! Dean had told him that everything he was wearing was _authentic_ , and Jack guessed that was a very good thing. It _felt_ like a very good thing, for sure. Jack was wearing jeans and a red flannel shirt, which was like an outfit he wore often, but they were brand new. Dean had also gotten him brand new cowboy boots, something called a bolo tie, a new vest, and a little cowboy hat that fit his head just right. Jack and Dean had been planning this for months, ever since Sam and Eileen had set the date, and Jack just knew he would be the best-dressed person at the whole wedding. He was absolutely certain of it.

“Alright,” Dean muttered, turning Jack back around to help him button up his shirt and get it tucked into his pants. “This is a lot better than a monkey suit, ain’t it?”

Jack giggled. “I’m not a monkey, Dean!”

“You sure about that?” Dean crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue and made Jack laugh even harder. Then he started singing softly some song about Oklahoma, and Jack tilted his head.

“ _Dean!_ We’re in _Kansas_.”

“I know,” he said, and he buttoned up Jack’s vest. “Siddown, we gotta get your shoes on.” Jack sat and let Dean put on his new boots. They were a little stiff, but Jack thought they were cool, so he didn’t care. They looked like the ones Dean had. “Jack, can I tell you somethin’?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say goodnight to you last night. Cas told me that makes you upset when we don’t all say goodnight to you. I promise that won’t happen again.” Dean didn’t want to say any more than that about what he had gotten up to last night. If Jack had still been the way he was Before, Dean wondered if maybe the truth would just come tumbling out. But things were different now, and he wasn’t about to tell a three-year-old he’d gone on a bender because he apparently had the emotional maturity of a rock. He tapped Jack’s foot. “Can you forgive me?”

Jack wasn’t quite sure what he needed to forgive Dean for, and he tilted his head to the other side and watched him, which Dean noted was extremely Cas-like, and it made him smile a bit. “Yeah,” Jack said. “’S’okay.”

“Alright then.” Dean helped him stand up. “Ready to get your hat on?”

“Yes!” Jack scurried over to the bed and grabbed his hat, and then he ran back over to the mirror and smushed it down on his head and grinned. That was more like it! Now he was really a cowboy! “How do I look?” He asked.

“Aces, kiddo,” Dean said. “Aces.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s very good.”

There was a knock on Dean’s bedroom door, and Cas’s voice floated from the other side. “Are you two ready? It’s time to go, Dean.”

Dean shot Jack a conspiratorial look. “Oh, we sure are. Got a little surprise for the two of you.” Dean motioned for Jack to come up behind him, and Jack ran up and hid behind his legs. “You ready?”

Cas rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and Sam bit his lip. At least his brother was in a better mood this morning. “Yeah, Dean, we’re ready,” Sam said.

Dean opened the door slowly, and then looked down at Jack, who hopped out from behind him, threw his hands up in the air, and yelled, “Surprise! I’m a _cowboy!_ ”

Well, Sam started laughing right-out. Cas just stared down at his son in shock, trying to reconcile the fact that he’d be going to Sam and Eileen’s wedding in a cowboy hat and little boots with little spurs on them. Dean looked absolutely delighted with himself, and Cas had to admit that this was a very Dean idea. “Yes…you are,” Cas said slowly.

“I just thought it might be more fun than a suit or somethin’,” Dean shrugged. “I mean, he’s gotta spend Halloween at a wedding. He’s gonna miss trick-or-treating – why not let him have a little fun?”

Sam let out a happy sigh. That was a fair point – most three-year-olds weren’t going to be spending Halloween night with a bunch of adults in a church at a wedding. Actually, _most_ people weren’t going to be spending their Halloween at a wedding. The whole thing had been Eileen’s idea, not knowing Sam’s…aversion to the holiday. The only criteria they’d set for the date was one – they wanted to try to avoid the heat (Sam got sweaty), and two – they otherwise wanted to do it as soon as possible. It was the rest of their lives – they wanted to start it as soon as possible. She thought it was a scream; what was funnier than two hunters getting married on Halloween?

_“I hate Halloween,” Sam had told her flatly. Eileen had raised an eyebrow in concern._

_“Why?” It wasn’t like when Dean asked in the past, not pushy, but Sam did want her to know, and this time, he decided not to tap-dance around the issue. Besides, it was like Grandma said – no good marriage was built on secrets._

_“When I was in the sixth grade I threw up all over this girl I liked at her Halloween party. She cried. I ran away. It sucked. So – I’ve hated it ever since.” Sam thought a moment longer. “And, you know, every day is sorta like Halloween for us.” He almost cringed at that old line, but it was sort of true._

_Eileen pursed her lips. “Well, what about the next Saturday? Or maybe the one before Halloween? I’m trying for a weekend here. It’s convenient.”_

_“I didn’t say no.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“I didn’t say no,” Sam repeated. “Do you like the idea of getting married on Halloween?”_

_Eileen stared at Sam, trying to find the words to explain what was really a pretty goofy idea. “I just thought it might be kinda fun. But I don’t want you to be unhappy – “_

_“I won’t be,” Sam shook his head. “I mean…our lives are our own now. We gotta take shit by the reigns, and stupid as it may sound, who says I can’t start with Halloween? Associate some good memories with it.”_

_“So…? What are you saying?”_

_“I’m saying maybe it’s time to start over with it, move on from barfing all over Andrea Howell – “_

_“And move on to spraying your bodily fluids all over me.”_

_Sam stared at Eileen in complete silence for a full minute; a full minute of her staring right back at him with the corniest grin he’d ever seen in his life. Her smile never faltered, not even once, and the longer Sam watched her, the harder it was to keep his own smile off his face. He knew there was a reason he had fallen for this woman, and surprisingly enough, this was one of them. They were alike in many ways – but believe it or not, Sam loved a woman who could deliver a dirty joke and not bat an eye._

_“I love you,” Sam said and signed, completely deadpan._

_“I know!”_

_“Let’s get married on Halloween.”_

_“I’ll get the invites ready.”_

“Well, Jack – I think you look great,” Sam said. “Doesn’t he look great, Cas?”

Cas finally cracked a smile. Not a big one, but a Cas smile – you know the one. “Yes, he does. Does it make you happy, Jack?”

“Yes!” He exclaimed, jumping up and down and making his spurs jingle. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Then you should wear it,” Sam said with a nod. “We ready to go?”

Dean cocked an eyebrow. “I think the better question is, are _you_ ready to go?”

Sam looked between his brother, his best friend, and his kid – who was currently turning in circles and singing the first verse of “Froggie Went A-Courtin’” on repeat. They’d always been an odd little group, and in that moment, Sam had never loved any of them more. “Yeah,” he said, voice thick. “I’m ready.”

xXx

Driving to the church, Dean – who was ahead of Sam, Cas, and Jack in the Thunderbird (because apparently Sam wasn’t allowed to drive it until he and Eileen made their getaway) – came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road, and Sam had to slam on the Impala’s brakes to avoid hitting him. Dean got out of the car, and for moment, Sam thought maybe he needed to get sick, and he and Cas got out to go after him, leaving Jack in his car seat, singing another one of his songs.

“Dee, what is it?” Sam asked. Sitting on the side of the road, the object of Dean’s attention, was an old building, looking about ready to collapse in on itself. Dean stood there in front of it in its old gravel parking lot and stared. Cas watched on, worried, wondering if his old friend had finally cracked.

“I was here last night,” Dean explained, sounding confused. 

“Yeah, Donna and Garth said they found you here. They said you thought that other people had been here, too.”

Dean felt a lump crawl up into his throat, and for a second there, he worried, too, that maybe he’d finally lost his marbles. That last night had been his breaking point. But then Cas, who had been meandering through the gravel lot, came up short and said, “There were people here, once.”

Sam and Dean turned on their friend. “What?” Dean spat. “Cas, don’t pull on my leg here, man. Don’t patronize me.”

Cas shook his head. “I’m not. This place is crawling with spiritual activity. So, yes – those people you met last night were here, once. A long time ago.”

It caught up with Sam first. “You’re saying Dean hung out with a bunch of spooks last night.”

Dean could hear the laughter in his brother’s voice, how he was teasing him, and Cas even looked like he was smirking a bit, but Dean found the situation anything but funny. “The hell’re you laughin’ at me for, Sammy?”

“I’m not laughing at you!”

“Yes, you are!”

“No, he’s not,” Cas said calmly. “He’s not laughing at you, Dean. Neither am I.”

Dean took a deep breath and tried to collect himself. See? He wasn’t crazy – he hadn’t been alone last night. He’d just…wandered into a ghost bar. And got taught a life lesson, which was a little on the nose. Happy Halloween, he supposed. “So – I really wasn’t alone last night.” Cas shook his head – nope, not alone. It really did come in handy to have an angel friend sometimes. “And you’re telling me there’s a _ghost bar_ in _our_ town.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Cas confirmed. “They must be pretty harmless.”

Ghost bar. That was rich. The old building groaned and creaked in the slight wind, and Dean was momentarily grateful it hadn’t collapsed on him last night; that really would have been a slap in the face to his family, if he’d just up and died like a goddamned idiot. Dean crossed his arms tight over his chest, feeling cold, though whether that was from the presence of spirits or just the wind was anyone’s guess. The longer he stared at the old place, the worse he felt, even though Cas had told him that he had indeed interacted with people last night – it’s just that they were dead people. A middle-aged man walks into a ghost bar and…and nothing. And felt sorry for himself? No. Nothing. There was no story there, nothing to investigate further this time. Cas said they were a benign presence. Dean got home safe, and he remembered. He knew what happened. Maybe that was all that mattered here. Case closed – though there really wasn’t even a case to begin with.

Who knew there would come a time when Dean Winchester would come toe-to-toe with a bunch of ghosts and not want to dust them. Who knew.

“Look! Look-look-look!”

“Aw, shit, he got out of his car seat again. Jack!” Sam called, marching up to the bar. “Get out of there, it’s dangerous.”

Dean had registered vaguely that Jack had teleported out of his car seat – he was probably feeling a little left out and impatient, and using his powers, he had discovered, was a great way to get attention – to stand on the porch and stomp around and pretend he was a cowboy and this was his saloon. (Dean wondered if maybe he should pull back on the Westerns for a while. What preschooler wanted to pretend he was at a saloon throwing back whiskey that tasted like gasoline? Maybe it really _wouldn’t_ kill him to let Jack pick the movie every now and then.) Jack yelped indignantly when Sam picked him up and carried him off, but then he tossed him in the air – his hat miraculously staying on his head – and that seemed to fix things.

What struck Cas the most about this scene was that the little boy in the cowboy costume would one day command the Host of Heaven, and that little boy was in the hands of probably the three least capable men on the planet. The most powerful being in the universe, and he was singing the nonsense bits from “Good Morning, Starshine” with the once Boy King, who was on his way to his wedding. It was all sort of funny, wasn’t it? 

“Didja see me? I was a cowboy,” Jack grinned.

“I did,” Cas said. In his head, he was picturing Jack sitting on Heaven’s throne in his cowboy costume. What would Naomi make of something like that? It didn’t matter, Cas supposed – she wasn’t his regent. “But you won’t be getting out of your car seat again, will you?”

“I had to!” Jack insisted. “I had to talk to the ghosts! They’re all over _every_ where. They was talkin’ to me.” This was a pretty common phenomenon with Jack; they would go places and he would tell whoever he was with that he saw and spoke with ghosts, fairies, and other invisible supernatural creatures, and then in the same breath show Cas all the ladybugs and caterpillars he found in the garden. To him, they were all the same – they were all his friends.

“What’d they say, Jack?” Sam asked slowly. Jack grinned.

“They said they liked my costume,” he reported back proudly. “And to say hi and come back soon.”

“Did you tell them we would?” Dean asked, and Jack nodded.

“And they said that they wanna see _you_ ,” Jack said pointedly to Dean. “They said they wanna check up on you.” And there was the Jack from Before. It was like a knife to the heart, and all three men thought in that moment – recognizing the young man he was going to become – how much they looked forward to meeting him again.

Dean cleared his throat, aware of all the eyes on him. Even Jack was expectant, without having any idea about what had transpired here last night. “Then I guess we’ll have to.” That seemed to make Jack very happy. None of the older men wanted to pry too much into that right now – why the ghosts wanted them to come back, why Jack was seeing them, and how they need to work on stranger danger and staying in his car seat – because they had other things to do.

“Sam, we should get going,” Cas said. “We’re already running behind. Say goodbye to the ghosts, Jack.”

“Bye-bye!” Jack waved over Sam’s shoulder, as if they were his old, old friends.

“Bye-bye,” Dean mumbled, and then he wandered back to the Thunderbird, more than ready to get the attention off of him and onto his brother.

xXx

“Eileen, you look _stunning_.”

“ _So_ beautiful.”

“The bridal buttons are such a nice touch…”

“It’s so _you_.”

“You’re right – a veil would have been totally awful…”

“ _Claire…”_

“I’m saying I like it!”

Eileen didn’t quite know what to do with all this attention; it was making her face heat up, and she couldn’t stop smiling to save her life. It made her feel kind of ridiculous, really, but not so much in a bad or embarrassing way. She was sitting in a Sunday school room in her wedding dress, surrounded by women she was still getting to know, and being overwhelmed by compliments – it was just very, very different for her, but she was doing her best to trust it.

She and Sam had talked for a very long time about what this whole thing would look like. They both knew that their lives would never be one-hundred percent completely normal. Never. There would likely never be the white-picket fence, 401k, PTA, two-point-five kids and a dog suburban lifestyle for them. They weren’t trying to rule out any possibilities, but it was important to be realistic. What they _did_ know is that they loved each other, and wasn’t that enough? Maybe marriage was a more symbolic thing these days – not like Eileen came with a dowry – but it felt…right. And that’s what mattered.

They’d kicked around the idea of eloping, but the more they thought about it, the more they realized that they wanted to include the people they cared about, and running off to Reno like his parents had wouldn’t cut it. But this way, it involved their friends and family, and Cas was going to stand up there and marry them – he’d even gotten ordained for the occasion, as if he wasn’t already an Angel of the Lord (whatever weight that title carried these days.)

And Sam simply couldn’t have gotten married without Dean by his side.

xXx

It was a little unorthodox.

After everyone was seated, instead of Cas coming down the aisle first, followed by Sam and then a bridal party and flower girls and a ring bearer and then Eileen, all three of them walked down together, sort of chatting as if this was the most casual thing in the world, not even giving those in attendance a chance to stand up and watch the bride make her way down the aisle. All of a sudden, they were just – there. At the altar. Cas held his hands loosely in front of himself, and Sam and Eileen smiled and each other and held hands, and suddenly, a wedding was happening. Cas had already memorized all his lines, too. He got his hands ready to sign as he spoke, and then began.

“Welcome, family, friends and loved ones. We gather here today to celebrate the wedding of Sam and Eileen. You have come here to share in this formal commitment they make to one another, to offer your love and support to this union, and to allow Sam and Eileen to start their married life together surrounded by the people dearest and most important to them. So welcome to one and all, who have traveled from near and far. Sam and Eileen thank you for your presence here today and now ask for your blessing, encouragement, and lifelong support for their decision to be married.

“Marriage is perhaps the greatest and most challenging of human relationships….”

As Dean sat there watching his little brother, Jack sitting next to him and swinging his legs lightly back and forth, making his tiny spurs jangle, instead of listening to what Cas was saying about the sanctity of marriage and the loveliness that was Sam and Eileen’s relationship, he was thinking instead about all those months ago, when Sam first told him that this was what he wanted. That this was _who_ he wanted.

_“I need your advice on something.”_

_That was usually a statement that sent up a few red flags, probably because the request so rarely came up between them. Voluntarily asking for help was a Winchester no-no ninety percent of the time – maybe more – but Dean wasn’t going to deny him; this was his brother. So he rolled away from his desk and faced Sam as he stood in the doorway, looking like he was wavering between whether or not to stand at full height – how confident did he want to be right now? “What’s up?”_

_Sam took that as permission to come into the room and shut the door behind him, then pulled up a chair. An intimate moment, then. This was something very special that was happening between them. “I’m thinking about doing something sorta crazy,” Sam confided._

_“How crazy?” Dean asked._

_They had done some pretty ridiculous things in their time, but it looked as if their crazy days might be coming to a close, so Dean wasn’t quite sure what to expect here. “That kinda depends how you look at things.”_

_“You know how I look at things. Just tell me what it is, Sammy.”_

_Sam knew that he could tell Dean anything – that’s why he’d gone to him in the first place – but this was a Big One. This was a Really Big One. “Promise you won’t laugh.”_

_“What? Sam – “_

_“Promise, Dean,” Sam insisted, smiling – but serious._

_Dean sighed and held up his hands; preemptive surrender. “Alright, promise. I promise. Now tell me what it is!”_

_One last deep breath, and Sam looked at Dean with those big puppy dog eyes and a grin that Dean had never seen on his brother’s face before. “Ah…what would you say if I asked Eileen to marry me?”_

_His voice kinda wobbled on that last bit there, not so much with overwrought emotion, but with uncertainty and a real vulnerability; Sam so rarely expressed the things he wanted – neither of them did anymore – but that little wobble belied how cavalier his tone had been, or he had tried to make it. This was something he really wanted to do. Sam really wanted to ask Eileen to marry him, and he was coming to Dean to ask him…for advice? For his blessing? For help? Dean didn’t know yet, but it made him sit up and lean in a bit._

_Why in the hell had Sam thought he would laugh at him for this? From the get-go Dean had been all for Sam being with Eileen, if that’s what they had really wanted. To even the outside observer, in the past couple months – for as fast as they had gone by – one could see that the two of them had fully submerged themselves in their own little world; their own little universe of Sam-‘n’-Eileen-ness, consisting of her teaching Sam her language and his improvement, allowing them to fall further into each other and keep their secrets – at least when Dean was around, because he wasn’t as quick a study as Sam, and he only knew a few phrases and words in ASL (but had a decent grasp on the alphabet.) And, of course, there were the obvious things. They were in a relationship. It was kissing and sharing a bed and a life; backing each other up on the big things, but also just…making each other happy. It was really that simple sometimes. Eileen made Sam happy, and that made Dean happy to see._

_“Well…” Dean shook his head and chuckled a bit, even though he had promised not to laugh. “You’re serious? You really want to marry her?”_

_Sam wiped his hands on his jeans. One of the Winchesters less-than-desirable genetic traits – nerves meant sweaty hands. “It seems like the natural next step,” Sam nodded._

_Dean stared at his brother in silence for a very tense moment before saying, “That is one of the least romantic things I’ve ever heard. Are you a robot or something? You gotta do better than that – you think she’s gonna say yes to you if you get down on one knee and say, ‘well, Eileen, marriage is the next logical step in our relationship. Whaddya say?’”_

_Yeah, Dean had a point there – but that wasn’t what Sam was going to say. Did Dean really think Sam was that much of an idiot? Sam ran his hands through his hair and pulled a bitchface on his asshole of a brother. “That’s not what I’m gonna say, jackass. If I say it at all.”_

_Dean cocked an eyebrow. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”_

_“It means…” Sam sighed and hung his head. “It means that for as much as I want to ask her, I don’t know if…if…”_

_“If she’ll say yes,” Dean finished for him, and Sam nodded miserably. “Sam, that’s ridiculous. She’s fallen ass over teakettle for you – god knows why – but she has. ‘Course she’ll say yes.”_

_“You don’t know that,” Sam said quietly. “I don’t know that.”_

_“Well, you won’t know ‘til you ask.” When Sam didn’t say anything, Dean sighed. “Sammy. Dude. First you ask me what I think about all this, and now you’re backpedaling. What’s the deal?”_

_Sam looked as if he was about to burst into tears. “I just…I just…I’m scared for her, okay? I’ve just had no luck with this stuff, and…and part of me thinks if we keep going the way we are, she’ll be safe. But…I don’t want that,” he huffed. “I-I don’t…I want to be…what?” Sam blinked a couple times, losing his train of thought because Dean was looking at him with this soft look, and Sam didn’t know what to do with that. “What, Dean?”_

_“Oh my god,” Dean breathed, and he started laughing again. “You really love her, don’t you?” Sam felt himself nod. “Shit, man, you gotta quit second-guessing this. You have to ask her. It’s gonna kill you if you don’t. Dude, I’ll kill you if you don’t ask her. You deserve some happiness, Sammy – and she makes you happy.”_

She really did. And he her. So Sam asked her. And Eileen said yes.

Now they were here, and Dean’s heart was thrumming in his ears, and with the same poor timing he’d had all his life, as Cas was inching towards the vows, Dean shot up, and the entire crowd gasped. (Of course they gasped.) Shaking, Dean watched as Sam turned around, Cas stopped his spiel cold, and Eileen shot him a look that expressed confusion, concern, and a white hot anger that lay dormant in case Dean tried to pull any shit.

“Dean…”

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but his face crumpled and he suddenly lost the words. He could feel all the eyes in that church on him – particularly Jody’s, and definitely their grandmother’s – and it was so quiet Dean could hear his own heartbeat. But he had to do this. If he didn’t, he really _would_ be the shittiest brother ever-ever-ever. Sam already looked betrayed, like he figured Dean was doing the whole _I object_ thing, and that would’ve broken Sam’s heart because he was now at a point in his life where Dean was no longer the only person in his life that he cared for or loved – far from it, and in fact, he was up here trying to pledge his commitment to Eileen, and this was definitely throwing a wrench in those plans.

But that wasn’t what was happening here.

“ _Dean_ ,” Jack not-so-quietly whispered. “We have to sit down now!”

Sam locked eyes with his brother, and fifteen years of practiced, silent communication seemed to have prepared them for this exact moment. Who had Dean been kidding? His brother gets married and he tries to weasel out of being his best man? What kind of asshole did that make him? No, he needed to be up there with him – black eye, butterfly bandage, and all. Sam looked to Eileen, and she seemed to get it, too – another little sign that the two of them were a just-about-perfect fit.

Sam briefly let go of her hands and embraced his big brother. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.” The _for changing your mind_ went unsaid, but Dean heard it, and Sam pulled him up to stand beside him, and there was a chorus of _awww’s_ , which made Dean blush like crazy. Cas raised his eyebrows as if to ask _You two done? I worked on this for an entire weekend and I’m trying to make this nice for your brother and the woman he loves, so if you’re done making a scene that would be great._ Dean nodded once, and Sam smiled at their friend and grabbed Eileen’s hands again, giving them an extra squeeze. She squeezed back.

“Do I need to start over?” Cas asked, and the entire church rippled with laughter.

“Maybe just to the part where I give my brother away,” Dean joked, elbowing his baby brother, and Sam shook his head at Eileen, who wasn’t quite sure what Dean had said, but she could figure it was something…very Dean.

Cas smiled fondly at the trio. “How about, ‘Marriage is perhaps the greatest and most challenging of human relationships….’”

xXx

“Do you, Sam, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

“I do.”

“Do you, Eileen, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

“I do.”

Well, as lawful as they could get.

xXx

“May I have the rings, please?”

A very serious little cowboy hopped up out of his pew.

xXx

“…and by the power vested in me by the state of Kansas, and by the commitment you two have made to each other in the company of your loved ones, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” There was a tension in the air, and Cas smiled at Eileen, and then at Sam, nodding towards his wife and saying, “You may kiss your bride.”

To this day, all Sam can remember of that moment is Eileen throwing her arms around his neck and popping her leg as they kissed, and Dean and Jack hollering and wolf-whistling for all they were worth as the chorus of applause washed over them.

It was just the two of them, and for a moment in time, that was all they needed.

xXx

“You look _beautiful._ ” When Eileen just ducked her head, Sam laughed and grabbed her hand, fingerspelling, _Really! Would I lie?_

“Of course not. And for what it’s worth, you look beautiful, too.”

“Oh! – stop it.”

While Sam and Eileen were in their own little world, Claire spotted Dean from across the reception hall, looking lonely. She nudged Cas, who was inspecting the dessert table, even though he had no intention of partaking. “This really has him screwed up, huh?”

Cas hummed in the back of his throat. Donna really had done some very delicate work on the cupcakes. He sighed and looked over at his table, where Jack was sitting – still in full costume – going through his candy bucket. It was shaped like a pumpkin and bright orange, and since he’d had to miss out on Halloween, they’d given him that instead. Cas couldn’t quite tell if he was petering out just yet, but the reception was still going strong. The girls – Claire, Patience, and Alex – had decked out the reception hall to the nines, and while the food was pretty typical wedding food, there were pumpkins and bouquets of fall foliage (many of which Cas had worked on himself), bowls made to look like skulls…Claire told him that they’d raided the Party City and put a pretty big dent in their Halloween decoration stock. Sam had looked a bit startled at the surprise; Eileen had looked delighted – which in turn made it all a little easier to swallow for Sam.

“Change is difficult for him. It’s difficult for everybody,” Cas amended, “but the changes have all come so quickly. It takes time to reconfigure yourself. He’ll be alright.”

Claire hoped he was right. “I’m gonna go talk to him.”

Dean saw Claire making his way over, stride confident as she locked eyes with him. “Howdy,” she greeted.

“Howdy,” he parroted. “Who’re you s’posed to be? Wednesday Addams?”

Claire looked down at her dress, and yeah, maybe that was who she looked like. But it was Halloween, so…whatever. “You bet,” Claire nodded. “What about you? Midlife crisis personified?”

Dean felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “You bet.”

“Nice wedding,” Claire said. “It’s very…cowboy gothic.”

Yeah, that wasn’t a bad way to describe it. Between the group of hunters who cleaned up _pretty_ well – ranging from Jody and Donna, who clearly had some concept of formal dress; to Garth, who would look like Ichabod Crane for the rest of his life; to the Apocalypse world hunters, most of whom managed to sneak plaid into their dress – Jack in his cowboy costume, and the purple, orange, and black Halloween decorations, that description seemed pretty apt. Dinner had been simple but good comfort food, Donna had made sure they had enough fall-themed desserts to last them to the end days, and the whole experience was so sugary-sweet that Dean could feel his blood sugar skyrocketing.

But it was a nice wedding. His brother was happy, and Eileen was a great woman. That was the important part.

“Were you sent to check up on me?”

Claire didn’t answer right away, just asked, “Can I sit?” And Dean nodded. So she sat. “Nobody sent me. I just thought you looked lonely, and everybody else is talking about boring shit.” Dean raised an eyebrow and took a cool sip of his beer. Claire rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. They’re talking about kids and mortgages and _other_ weddings they’ve been to – which, I’m kinda amazed this group has even been to that many weddings, but…you know.”

“Jody and Donna _have_ been married before,” Dean reminded her kindly. “And Garth and Bess had one.”

“Did you go to theirs?” Dean shook his head. He and Sam hadn’t even known. “Have _you_ ever been to a wedding?”

Dean blinked a couple times – he hadn’t been expecting that question. His first thought was of Sam and Becky’s fucked up elopement in Vegas, but Dean figured that one didn’t really count. Sam hadn’t wanted that, but watching him now with Eileen, sitting off together in their own little world, only coming out of it every now and then as guests slowly started to filter out and offer their congratulations and well-wishes, Dean couldn’t stop thinking about how Sam couldn’t stop _smiling_. This was the happiest he’d seen him since Jack came back. It had taken him some time, and he and Eileen had their own bumpy road to getting here…but they were here.

If Sam could figure it out, even just a little bit, so could Dean. It was going to look different, and it might take a little more time, but it was going to happen. And that was the first time Dean believed it would.

“No, this is my first one,” Dean said a bit wistfully. He hoped to all hope Claire hadn’t picked up on his tone – she’d never stop ragging on him. “You?”

“Mom and Dad dragged me to one forever ago,” Claire said flatly. “I don’t even remember how we knew them. It was boring, though, I remember that. This one is way cooler in comparison.”

Dean smirked into his drink. “You’ll have to tell Sam and Eileen that. They’ll appreciate it.” They really would. The two people in the world who hated attention probably more than just about anybody, and they decided to have a real wedding with pretty much everyone they know in attendance in a goddamn church – of all places. There was something sweet about it.

“Trickertreat!”

Dean and Claire looked down and saw Jack holding out his pumpkin, which had been given to him already full of candy, but it seemed he was looking for more. Claire looked around and grabbed an uneaten miniature pumpkin pie (Donna had seriously gone all-out, good god) and handed it to Jack, who looked both delighted and confused. “Claire!” He squeaked. “I can’t put this in my basket! It’s not _wrapped._ ”

“Then just eat it now,” Claire suggested.

Jack thought about it for a minute, and then he set down his pumpkin, crawled up into Claire’s lap, and started eating his pie. Claire slid her eyes over to Dean, who just smiled at her. “Lookit you,” he drawled. “You’re practically big sister material.” She rolled her eyes.

“Shut up,” she mumbled. But she didn’t exactly say anything when Jack leaned back and made himself comfortable.

xXx

At the end of the night, after Sam had shook everyone’s hand (and gotten a soul-crushing hug from Garth) and Eileen had kissed everyone’s cheek and they had thanked everyone for coming; after Jody and Bess had packed away all the leftover food and saved the top of the cake for the new couple; after Jack had succumbed to a sugar-induced coma; after Patience and Claire had fought over who got to keep the last bottle of sendoff bubbles; after all of that, Dean handed over the keys to the Thunderbird to Sam.

“Finally,” Sam grinned, twirling the keyring around his finger. He pulled Eileen closer. “Time to blow this popsicle stand?” Dean rolled his eyes. 

“I think so,” Eileen nodded.

There were still a few people there – Garth and Bess had left so they could get back to the kids, and their grandmother had hitched a ride with Mildred, and all the Apocalypse world hunters had dipped out a while ago, but the girls were still here, sitting on the concrete steps and trying to pretend they weren’t cold. Jack was knocked out in Cas’s arms, and Cas had the feeling that he’d be pretty cranky tomorrow, and when he got that way he did things like blow out lightbulbs and teleport on top of bookcases, so he had that to look forward to. Dean walked Sam and Eileen to the T-Bird.

“Let me know when you guys get there, okay? Your stuff’s all loaded up in the back – Eileen, Bess and Patience got your dress and I’m gonna take it back to the bunker. I gave you guys the good credit card, right? And your bags are all in the trunk, so don’t worry about that. Sam, you have your fake? Thought you wanted to vote – “

Sam shook his head at his brother as he looked at him from over the roof of the car. “Dean,” he said placatingly, opening Eileen’s door for her. “Relax, man. We can handle ourselves for two weeks.”

“That is – only if you’re really as good with cars as you say,” Eileen joked with her new brother-in-law, and Dean winked at her.

“Alright, alright,” Sam said. He gave Eileen a quick peck and she ducked into the car, and then Sam shut her door.

“Where are you two going, anyways?” Dean asked.

Sam’s mouth twitched. “Haven’t decided yet. Really isn’t an itinerary – we kicked around the idea of heading up north to see Glacier, or out west to Devil’s Tower and then California or something. Or maybe just spend the two weeks on a beach in Florida.” Sam shrugged and came around to the driver’s side. “We’ll find ourselves somewhere. Bring you back a new mug.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, whatever. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t, okay?”

“Ah, think I just did.”

“Oh! – fucking _bastard_.”

For a moment it was awkward, and neither brother knew what to say. Was there anything to say? It wasn’t as if Sam wasn’t coming back. But know it wasn’t just Sam, it was Sam and Eileen, and who knew what lay ahead of them. Dean didn’t feel as bad as he had the night before, but he still felt a bit as if he was floating through space and trying to get his feet back on the ground. But they’d get there, he had to keep reminding himself. He’d get there. He would.

“Good job today, Sammy,” he whispered. “I’m proud of you. Mom and Dad woulda been, too.”

Sam blinked hard a few times; he hadn’t cried yet today, surprisingly, but he wasn’t about to start now. “Yeah,” Sam said weakly. “I’m proud of you, too, Dean.”

That made Dean smile. Yeah – at the end of the day, they hadn’t made out so bad for themselves. All they had to do was look around. Not so alone anymore. Dean embraced his little brother, and Sam squeezed back twice as hard. New chapter, and all that. And it was going to be great. It really was. “See ya in a couple weeks, Sammy.”

Sam pulled back, clapped his brother on the shoulder and nodded, then ducked into the Thunderbird, where Eileen was waiting for him with a sweet smile on her face. She reached out and grabbed his hand, and Sam brought it up to his mouth and kissed it. He held it up for a moment and ran his hand over her ring finger. _Whoever picked out that ring,_ he signed, _did an amazing job._

Eileen laughed. _Where to first?_

It was a great question. Sam looked out the front windshield and started the car. _Someplace warm to start?_

Eileen gave him the A-OK, and the couple tore out of the parking lot, their family yelling their goodbyes from the sidewalk, and the last thing Sam saw as he looked into the rearview mirror was Dean with one of his Dean smiles and his fists shoved into his pockets, growing smaller in the distance as they drove away.

Once they were out of sight, Dean turned back around to find that – huh. He wasn’t alone. They hadn’t all disappeared when Sam and Eileen drove off. Go figure.

“Good?” Donna asked.

“Good,” Dean affirmed.

“I can stay and help finish tearing down,” Cas told the girls. “Dean, why don’t you take Jack home.”

“I can do that.”

Cas transferred Jack over, Jody kissed his cheek, and Claire, Patience, and Alex all threatened to come over tomorrow so they could play with Jack before they headed home. Donna said she’d already put some leftovers in the Impala, and Dean hugged her extra tight for that one. As he carried Jack back to the Impala and buckled him into his car seat for the ride home, Jack woke up, looking drowsy.

“Halloween’s over?” He asked.

“Just about.”

“Can we go trickertreat?”

“No, trick-or-treat ended a couple hours ago. Time to go home.”

Jack suddenly looked very awake and _very_ alarmed. “Sam…Sam…Sam an’ Lee-Lee didn’t say goodbye to me! They went away already!”

Jack started to cry, the exhaustion of the day probably making this even harder on him, and Dean sighed and started shushing. “Hey,” he soothed. “Hey, hey. You wanna FaceTime them tomorrow?” Jack nodded. “Okay. We’ll do that.”

As Dean slid into the driver’s seat, Jack piped up from the back, “Promise?”

“Yeah, kiddo, we’ll call ‘em tomorrow.”

“No! I mean promise they’ll be back.”

Dean looked over at the empty passenger seat, and the melancholy thoughts _almost_ got to him, but then he looked into the rearview mirror and the petulant kid sitting in the backseat and smiled. “They’ll be back before we know it,” he assured him. “Now go to sleep.”

“Dean?”

“What.”

“Can we…can we…can we go fishing?”

_“Well, bait and beer. You are a cheap date. This certainly isn't Tahiti.”_

_“You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.”_

_“I didn't say that.”_

_“It was how you said it. I could tell.”_

He wasn’t totally sure, but Dean couldn’t help but think that in all his three-year-old wisdom, Jack was trying in his own way to make him feel better. And he wondered if he remembered that day, too, as fondly as Dean did. “Yeah, kiddo. We can do that.” As he started up the car, Dean asked, “Jack, you gonna be my day-planner from now on?” Didn’t sound like such a bad fate to him – to live day-by-day on the whim of a preschooler.

But Jack was already asleep.

Dean took that as a yes.

xXx

_Two Weeks Later_

Jack looked down into the creek and frowned at it. There were a bunch of little tadpoles flitting around in the shallow, and Jack wanted to play with them, but Dean said that Jack was too big to get in the water with them, and it was too cold to get in the water anyways, and even if it wasn’t too cold, he didn’t have his swimsuit on. Jack had tried to argue that the tadpoles were little kids like he was, just frog-kids instead of kid-kids, but Dean had still said no and that he should get his little butt over here so he could keep a better eye on him.

“It’s late for tadpoles,” Jack told Dean. “They’re _usually_ borned in the spring.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Did you catch any fishes yet?”

“Not yet,” Dean murmured. “Might not be my day.” Jack had lost interest in the actual fishing part pretty early, but that was okay – Dean would work on him. He reeled in his line slowly, figuring it was about time to pack it up and head home; he’d gotten a text from both Cas and Eileen that she and Sam would be home within the hour, and Jack was this close to just hopping into the water and squashing some tadpoles, so Dean packed up his bait, shouldered his fishing pole, and stood. “C’mon, kiddo. There’s a surprise waiting for you at home.”

Jack scrambled up and ran from the bank, following Dean back to the Impala and trying to guess what the surprise was all the way home. It ranged from ice cream to a puppy to a rocket ship, all of which were way off base, and Dean made sure to tell him so. It all clicked when they pulled into the garage, though, and Jack saw a green car parked right in front of them as they came to a stop, and he gasped.

“They’re home!” He shouted, trying to get himself out of his car seat by tugging on the seatbelt, but when that didn’t work – and Dean was too slow to get to him for his liking – Jack took one look at Dean and then disappeared in a flutter of little wings, and Dean hit his head against the steering wheel in frustration.

“Jack!” He called as he ran after him, guessing they were all probably in the library. “Jack! Kiddo, we’ve talked about this…” As he approached the library, he could hear Jack squealing in utter glee and three voices talking over his laughter, and sure enough they were all in the library. Sam had him by his legs and was holding him upside down, which clearly delighted him. Sam and Eileen both looked very tan for November, which was really just unfair. Jack spotted him first.

“They’re back! They’re back, Dean!” He shouted.

“They sure are.” Dean poked his exposed stomach, which just make Jack peal with laughter. What? It was easy to make the kid laugh. “Good times, you two?”

Sam and Eileen exchanged a knowing little look. “Great times,” Sam said, and left it at that. “We got lots of pictures, brought back some lame souvenirs – Dean, got you your mug.”

“Oh, _perfect_.”

“Jack was telling us about how you two went fishing,” Cas said. “Catch any?”

Dean sat down at one of the tables and shook his head. “Nah. How’s Claire, Cas?”

“She’s…Claire,” Cas shrugged, and Sam and Dean both nodded knowingly. Cas had left to help Claire out with a case, leaving just Jack and Dean, and had gotten home apparently just minutes before Sam and Eileen had. “She says we’re all invited to South Dakota for Thanksgiving.”

“I _would_ like to get to know them better,” Eileen said. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, grunting as he set Jack down. “Hungry, Jack?”

“For Thanksgiving?”

“No, not Thanksgiving yet.” Sam turned to Eileen. _Can you take him, give the three of us a second?_

 _No problem._ “You want to help me with dinner, Jack?”

Jack leapt up and followed Eileen to the kitchen to get started on dinner, and Sam waited until they were out of earshot before he sat down next to Dean. Cas stood opposite him, and both he and Dean watched Sam with raised eyebrows. “What’s this all about?” Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. “Nothin’.”

“Nice try,” Cas said bluntly. “What is it.”

Sam sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. The beard was seriously going to take some getting used to, and Dean couldn’t help but think he looked even more hippie-dippy these days. But he guessed Eileen liked it on him. “I was just – thinking.”

“Uh-oh.”

“…and, I just…wanted to make sure you guys were…okay.”

Dean and Cas stared at Sam like he’d grown a second head. “Okay with what?” Dean asked slowly.

“With…” Sam gestured to the air around them. “Everything. Because things have changed a little – “

Cas cut him off. “Sam.”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“Are you happy?”

“Yeah,” Sam said immediately, honestly. “Yeah, of course I am – we are,” he corrected. “I was just – “

“Just nothing,” Cas interrupted. “Compared to your situations in the past, I’d say that is a massive improvement.” He shrugged, as if the remark was very casual. Sam felt sheepish.

“I just…don’t want you guys to feel like I’m leaving you behind.”

“We don’t, Sammy,” Dean assured him. “We’re all figuring out what this looks like. What… _living our own fucking lives_ looks like. Day at a time, kiddo. Don’t feel bad that you’ve found something. And that something’s gonna look different for all of us.” That was refreshing to hear from Dean, and Sam and Cas looked each other, probably thinking along the same lines. “Sun comes up each day, right?”

“Right,” Sam whispered. “I just…I wanted to be sure.”

“We’re sure.” Cas started to wander towards the kitchen. “Now stop moping – we should probably give Eileen a hand.”

Sam huffed a laugh. Jack in the kitchen wasn’t always a huge help. To be fair, neither was Cas, but between the four adults they could probably figure something out. “Yeah, we probably should.” He looked over to his brother. “Cas was with Claire – how ‘bout you? Jack keep you busy?”

“Oh, yeah.” Dean pushed himself up with a groan. “With, ya know, retiree stuff.”

Sam threw his head back and laughed. “Doesn’t sound so bad, spending the rest of your life doing things you like.”

“And you get to spend the rest of it doing _who_ you like.”

Sam popped him in the shoulder – hard. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, but there wasn’t a lot of venom behind it, and Sam pushed him into the kitchen, where Eileen was pretty much doing all of the heavy lifting.

As Dean joined Eileen to help finish dinner and Sam sat down at the table with Jack and Cas, pulling out his phone so he could show them some of the pictures from the honeymoon, the grown-ups in the room all noted that there had been a definite shift in things – not so much the end of the story as the end of a chapter, if we’re going to be trite here, but if we’re not, then the best way to say this story ends, really, is by letting you know that it doesn’t actually end at all. Not yet. It’s just not the stuff of heroes anymore – it’s the stuff of heroes after they win, which typically isn’t very interesting. If the final step of the Hero’s Journey is to return to their world a changed person and looking forward to a new life, then this was the New Life.

And the best part?

For them, it _looked_ a lot like the Old Life, but this time, they finally had some say in it. They didn’t know what tomorrow knew, no more steps in the journey. This was It. What’s that Beatles line? _Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go, nowhere to go_. Yeah…that’s what this was. 

There was nowhere to go, no destination on the horizon, and they would ride that road to nowhere until – well, Sam put it best: they’ll find themselves somewhere. 

Somewhere sounded like a great place to someday be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
